


Eosophobia

by tripodion



Series: Cicatrix [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Assassinations Galore, BAMF!John, Blood, Guns, Hitman! John, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, Sex, and INTERNATIONAL ESPIONAGE, and one badass OC, and other sundried adventures, globetrotting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:38:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 44,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripodion/pseuds/tripodion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Sherlock traverses the globe to burn what remains of Moriarty, John turns away from his past life and begins a new one. Desperate to break out of his best friend's coffin, John Watson, soldier, becomes John Watson, assassin and Sherlock Holmes is next on his list.</p><p>Part 1 of the Cicatrix series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> "Beneath the stains of time,  
> The feelings disappear,  
> You are someone else,  
> I am still right here"
> 
> "Hurt" - Nine Inch Nails

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "the pain of war cannot exceed
> 
> the woe of aftermath"

* * *

Soldiers can never wash the blood off their hands, and John knows this, so he has stopped trying. He stopped a long time ago, when his best friend threw himself off a roof and John knew with absolute certainty, knew as he gripped at Sherlock's sleeve, that he would never get this blood off.

He sat in the shower that night, fully clothed, trembling under scalding water. It still felt cold and he still shook, no matter how high he turned the faucet or how much steam billowed around him. He kept hearing the crunch of bones that he knew he didn't see, kept seeing those bright blue eyes staring into a sky painted the same colour, unmoving, unfeeling. Just…staring.

If someone were to ask John what he did the month or so after the incident (he refuses to name it), he wouldn't be able to answer because he doesn't remember. He remembers waking and bathing and eating and working, but nothing else. His memories of then are static, white noise. He was on the wrong frequency and everyone else was on the right one, ignorant of his desperate, inaccurate lunges to claw his way back in. Everything he tried was wrong, everything he said was wrong, everything he did was  _wrong_ , so eventually he stopped. He stopped trying and accepted his fate. What else could he do?

Harry stopped calling first. Then Lestrade. Then Molly. Lovely Molly. So kind and nice, so undeserving of his cold brush-offs, of his half-hearted apologies. He knew Lestrade meant well, knew that Lestrade was just as confused and stunned by Sherlock's death as he was. But Lestrade had not cared for Sherlock like John did. Sherlock had been a commodity to him, just an asset really, not that vital factor that sent John's very blood rushing through his veins. Not the breath in his lungs. Not the pounding of his heart. Sherlock had only ever been that to John.

His blood had turned stagnant, like standing water, coagulating into a thick gruel in his arms, lungs, chest, heart, head, brain, fucking  _everywhere_ , anywhere it could get, ceasing to move the moment Sherlock plummeted off that rooftop.

He felt like he was about to get sick at any moment, like someone had punched him in the stomach, like some unknown force had shoved its hand down his throat and it was choking him with darkness, with an inky heaviness, and he was dry heaving shadows.

He woke up most nights, screaming, sweating, crying. Usually some combination. Sometimes all.

That first week afterwards he would stumble out of bed and vomit into the sink, images of Sherlock's bloodied face burning in his mind. The first few days afterwards he hadn't made it to the sink.

A month in, he had nearly been hit by a car as he crossed the street before it swerved and avoided him. He found himself wishing that it hadn't.

Five months in and he very nearly had developed a drinking problem. It had started with one finger of whiskey, just to help him sleep. As the weeks passed, one finger had turned into three, then four, and finally, once he had drunkenly stumbled into Sherlock's untouched room on mistake, thinking it to be his own, did he collapse into angry tears, toss the bottle away, and promptly fall asleep in the doorway to his dead flatmate's room, tear tracks staining his face.

A year in, he had taken one too many sleeping pills and awoken by a harsh slap in the face from a frantic Lestrade and a sobbing Mrs. Hudson. He hadn't understood their grief. He was John. Just John. Not Sherlock. He didn't deserve their worry or their pity. Why did they care for him, when he wasn't Sherlock? When Sherlock wasn't there to validate his usefulness?

Lestrade still stopped by sometimes. That always puzzled John, since Sherlock wasn't there to answer his questions. He even asked John to come to a few crime scenes, but the lack of a swirling black coat barking orders and insults had made John kneel over and vomit, which Lestrade had kindly attributed to the gory body before him although they both knew otherwise.

And so John Watson turned away from the world.

Sherlock Holmes had not been the only one to die that day. Even though he hadn't meant to, even though it was the last thing he wanted, he had managed to take John with him.

Donovan had been right.

Sherlock Holmes finally had a body count. Maybe soon, it would be official.

* * *

The first time it happened, it was an accident. Or John told himself that it was an accident, but some deeper, unacknowledged voice in him quietly whispered at night that it might have been on purpose.

It was on Christmas Eve, and, since John had no one to celebrate it with, he had found himself working the night shift at the medical centre. Mrs. Hudson had offered a cracker and eggnog, but he had politely refused her, just as he had refused Lestrade's invitation of dinner at the detective inspector's home. They were good people, good friends, but John didn't need any of that right now. He didn't need to be reminded of just how acutely alone he was.

He always found it odd that people thought nothing bad ever happened on Christmas. He found it odd that they thought that muggers and thieves and murders would look at their calendars and say 'Oh, well it's Christmas Eve, never mind, I'll just kill you tomorrow'. Of  _course_  there was still violence and abuse and blood spilt on Christmas, just as there was every other day. John might even wager that there were  _more_  incident reports on Christmas than any other day.

So it didn't surprise him when the local hospitals called after being swarmed with E.R. patients and asked him if the clinic was willing to work as a temporary base. And it was no surprise when John, one of the few trauma doctors around, was assigned to handle the severe cases. He was the best equipped after all.

This man that was bleeding out before him was no different. It was a mugging gone bad scenario, except it was the mugger that lay before him, violently bleeding from a curving cut to his leg, right to the femoral artery, probably even nicking the profunda. People lost their morality when it was fight or die. When backed into a corner, humans were just as capable of desperate wildness as any other animal. But this cut, this slice across the mugger's leg, it was too calculated. The person who did it was either involved in medicine or had some semblance of trauma experience to know that they had one shot to get away, and that this wound was their best shot, even if it was often fatal. The cut seemed to be almost ten minutes old, so this man was half-dead by the time he was wheeled in. There wasn't much time.

John peeled off the already soaked through bandages and reapplied new ones as he propped the man's leg up. He toyed with the idea of a tourniquet for a brief moment, yet the risk of necrotic tissue outweighed the situation. He finally settled on a hemostatic agent when the man began to talk.

"I knew this would kill me."

"You're going into shock." John said calmly. Seeing the blood bloom underneath crisp white bandages seemed to soothe him. "You might want to save your energy."

"I killed a kid once." The man admitted through clenched teeth. His whole body had broken into a cold sweat as he shook.

"I'm not a priest; telling me that isn't going to do you any good, at least in this life."

"He was eleven. I used to knock his mum around, and he tried to stop me. So I went into his room one night and I smothered him with his pillow."

John stopped, about to uncap the agent, about to apply it to a mugger-murderer trauma victim and save his life.

"You don't want to save someone like me." The man said, the tremors racking his body. "I'm not going to stop. I know I'm not. Don't save me. I'm not worth it."

He died with that condemnation on his tongue, he died with John standing there dumbly, clutching that uncapped, unused hemostatic agent.

John put the cap back on. Called the morgue to send someone up and get the body. Called a cleaning crew to mop up the blood. Washed his hands. Watched the blood sluice off his palms and dye the water a pale red before disappearing down the drain.

It was an accident, John would tell himself later. Just an accident.

* * *

The second time, it wasn't an accident. There was no way John could fool himself into thinking it was.

He thought he was a better man than bribes, he really did. But after that first month, after that period of observed grief, Mrs Hudson had come to him and quietly, carefully asked when he was going to pay the rent. She had said there was no rush, no rush at all, that she'd understand if he was a little late, but after a month he knew she couldn't wait forever. Paying for a flat was easier with two people than with one, and now there was just one. Only one. How appropriate was it, that the cost of rent was how he and Sherlock met, and that was how he would try and forget him. But he didn't want to. He didn't want someone else in Sherlock's room, he didn't want another Sherlock because of the simple fact that there would  _never_  be another Sherlock.

But he was in no position to ensure that forever. So he made sure he could for the time being.

He was no Kevorkian, but he knew a terminal case when he saw it, and the family that sat on that plain sofa in front of him would have to pay, would have to deal with years of repaying their bills and debts to prolong something he could end for them now.

So he did. He didn't tell them, but he did, going into the room quietly at two in the morning for a routine check-up and coming out of the room at two-thirty with the news. He had expected grief or tears or even suspicion, but all he saw was relief. They both, he and this family, wanted the same thing, and now they had it.

Later, the son took him aside and asked him about it, and John didn't lie. He wasn't the lying type, not when he was outside Sherlock's sphere of influence. And that sphere was shrinking every day. The son appreciated the truth, so John told him, and he was rewarded. That surprised him, because he hadn't wanted a reward, he hadn't done it expecting payment. He did it to offer that family solace and comfort in something that was slowly killing them. He was ripping the bandage off so the wound could breathe and not lie in its dormant, saturated, wrinkled state.

He didn't have any options, and so he took the one that he was offered.

The third time, he even may have enjoyed it. It was the same feeling as putting your bare feet on the cold floor, but now he has slippers on. When the thought first came to him, John thought it was stupid, but now he feels that it was appropriate in the simplest terms. He doesn't feel shocked by it anymore. He doesn't feel  _anything_  about it anymore.

John was a soldier first and a human next, to put it bluntly. Death was not a foreign idea to him that he pondered at night. Death was his enemy, his friend, his companion, his constant reminder. He had seen it as instantly as men catching bullets in the neck, he had seen it as prolonged as cancer, he had seen slow, bloody deaths and he had seen quick, clean ones. Death was beautiful in its fury, in its unceasing ability to bring the strongest to their knees and the weakest to their feet. Nothing about it was new to him. Nothing about it shocked him anymore. Everyone died,  _everyone_ , even people that believe they are infallible.

John had learned his lesson.

No one was immortal, and no one could escape Death. Even Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

The third time, he didn't like to think back on it. It was as if he were trying to remember what it was like to be a newborn peering into his mother eyes. Everything about it was dark and bloody and viciously bright and beautiful.

The third time, it had been an accident and on purpose and enjoyable, all at once. He never told anyone, he wouldn't  _ever_  tell anyone what had truly happened. All they needed to know was that there was a body and John Watson had put it there.

He remembered his phone ringing and he had scrambled a bloodied hand into his pocket to answer the unknown number.

"Mycroft?"

After that blood and darkness, John stepped into the light.

The third time, John was reborn.

And so John Watson returned to the world.

* * *

He knew better than to talk in the Diogenes Club. He learned his lesson on his first visit.

This time, he had come to Mycroft. He had not been taken or 'kidnapped' or talked into walking into that waiting black car. He had come, of his own free will, to see the remaining Holmes brother.

Mycroft was, unsurprisingly, expecting him.

He looked up as John came in, eyes sweeping over him and collecting whatever data that was useful to him, knowing John's circumstances, his motives for coming, and his future the moment he sat down.

"Did you come here expecting my protection again?" Mycroft asked, his tone slightly irritated as always, as if John had interrupted him while he was busy with something far more important.

"No," John answered curtly, "I came here to warn you."

John could now count himself among the ranks of the rare few people on the earth who could say they had seen Mycroft Holmes surprised. Yet Mycroft did not prod further. He was curious.

"I know that you know what's happened to me since...well, since what happened. I know that you know that I'm going to agree to their terms." John continued lowly. "You can protect me like Sherlock would want, or you can try to stop me like Sherlock might want, but don't get in my way."

"If you're going rogue, you know the rules already, I'm sure. No collateral damage or I get involved. No non-combatants or unauthorised assignments and I get involved. I don't know how much liberty you were given in Afghanistan, and I don't know how much you used it if you were, but you cannot breach civilian lines."

"I know. I don't plan to. I'm meant to follow orders, Mycroft. I'm sure you realised that."

"I'll be watching you, John."

"I know."

John left.

Mycroft eyed his phone, weighing the benefits of calling his dearly departed brother to inform him, before deciding that, as Sherlock had cut himself out of John's life, he had no claims on the need to know what John was planning to do now that he was gone.

John Watson was now, finally and terribly, of great interest to Mycroft Holmes.


	2. night

John Watson was a man of principle, which, as he accepted his new job, meant that he was the first and only person to ever state his restrictions and limitations. Well, really, he had only had one.

_Only ones I know are guilty. I have to have proof._

His recruiter had stared at him for a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe what he had said. A flash of straight, white teeth appeared from behind red lips.

 _You're an unusual man, Doctor Watson_.  _No one has ever asked that of us before._

_I wasn't asking._

_And if we don't acquiesce?_

_Then I'll leave and you'll pretend that this didn't happen._

_You're good at what you're doing, Doctor. You have so much potential._

_Are you agreeing, then?_

_We are acquiescing, yes. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us? Any other qualms?_

John didn't much care for picking off good political leaders (that was the only time he associated 'good' with 'politics'), but other than that, no, he had no qualms.

_Welcome then, Dr Watson._

_Please, call me John._

* * *

That had been three years ago.

He still worked out of 221b Baker Street, despite the shadows that clung to it. There were rules however. There were places he would not and could not go.

John was a man of principle, after all.

He never went into Sherlock's room, never, not on any moment of any day in those three years, and he certainly didn't want to now. Going in there would be counterproductive. It would reopen the wound that was still healing over. It would grind salt and dirt into the gaping scar tissue and remind John that, despite what he hoped, Sherlock still was not there. Every day he took a miniscule step closer to confirming the conviction that Sherlock was as dead and gone as everybody else was or will ever be.

It's not that he wanted to think that way. But, as Sherlock would say, he'd have to look at the evidence. He'd seen the detective's fall, and a bloodied, broken body and a gravestone were pretty hard to refute.

Sometimes he would get the kettle out and make two cups of tea before he realised what he'd done. Wordlessly, he'd dump the tea out, regardless of the waste or whether he wanted his anymore or not, and continue on with what he'd been doing, feeling as if a cold wind had passed straight through his chest, leaving him breathless and gasping for air.

Once, he'd even smashed a cup of hot tea in his hand. That had been quite stupid. Sherlock would've scoffed and called him an idiot. Yet no such thing happened and John was left to bandage his burned, bloody hand in silence, which was the worst of all because it meant no one was there to rebuke him except himself, and he said to himself much worse things than Sherlock ever would, even on a bad day.

John couldn't help but realise that he was alone.

Alone with himself, his thoughts, which, more often than not, turned to Sherlock when the day was through and he'd wiped the blood off his hands.

Alone with that fucking door that stared at him all the time like a curious bystander at a crime scene, wondering what kind of carnage was happening past that tape.

Mrs Hudson had packed all of Sherlock's things, all of his experiments and equipment, everything that made Sherlock  _Sherlock,_  and placed it in that room that John would never go into if it meant that he wouldn't think about it. But he  _did_  think about it. That was the problem. He would stare at that plain door and think of nothing else but what lay behind it.

He tried not to think about it, but that wasn't the same as simply  _not_ thinking about it. He was in a constant staring contest with that damn door, and he always lost, always ceded defeat and turned away to pretend he wasn't thinking of it anymore.

When he was reborn, he was offered the chance to forget about the door, the things it held, and the man that used to sleep behind it (if and when he actually did sleep). They told him it wouldn't hurt, that he wouldn't remember anything about it, that it was a simple procedure. Optional, of course, completely optional, but if this  _door_  (he had told them 'door', but they were well-skilled in differentiating between what people said and what they meant) was going to be a problem, he may as well get rid of it.

He politely refused. He would rather live with the knowledge that Sherlock may return one day than not recognise Sherlock at all when he finally returned to him.

His first assignment had been a serial arsonist that decided one day to burn down a church during mass, but caught the Sunday school class in its stead. Ten children were burned alive, along with their young teacher, and eight survived, coming into the clinic with burn injuries. John remembers treating one of the kids, a girl around eight, and seeing her skin burnt and boiling as it bubbled over raw bloody tissue.

The organisation liked to make sure he witnessed the cruelty of his targets before they were given to him and he appreciated it. It kept his mind on track, kept his sights on what he was doing, what his goal was. John welcomed it, welcomed the knowledge that, as he treated these damaged people, he was going to avenge them. He would avenge these wrecked innocents, give them closure, give them hope that maybe there was some fucking justice in the world, even if the courts didn't side on their favour. And he was proud to say that justice's name included John Watson.

John had caught him at home one night, alone eating a frozen dinner, unaware of the man on the roof across from him. For the briefest moment, before he pulled the trigger and blood splattered on the walls, John hesitated, wondering if he should make this man suffer first. The cold, dark part of his brain, the corner that reminded him of Sherlock, told him that he should. But he ignored it, and pulled the trigger.

Some days it even felt like the army again. London pavement turned to Qurya sand under his feet and he could pretend the gravel on the rooftops was a dirt road in the mountains where everything seemed too beautiful to be so soaked in the blood of both sides. If he was being poetic, he could say that London was exactly the same. Yet it wasn't beauty or poetry that his mind strayed to when he was assembling his gun on a deserted roof or parking garage. He never thought of Sherlock or Mrs Hudson or Greg or Molly or Mike. None of them even came into his head.

No, he thought of war.

If he was feeling like being particularly honest with himself, he could admit that it was why he'd accepted the job in the first place. The chance to taste war again, so bitter and salty yet so virile and alive as he licked his lips before pulling the trigger that effectively ended someone else's life and gave him a paycheck. It was never for the money though. Just the blood. Just the feeling that he was doing something useful again. The feeling that he alone (for the moment anyways) was purging the world of bad, was saving someone else's life who he'd most likely never meet, never shake their hand, lean in and say _you're welcome_ , but that didn't really matter because he knew if he did meet them he would be he usual awkwardly charming self and never say a word of what he'd done to anybody.

He supposed if someone found him out, although he was quite careful and demonstrated a certain discretion that even Sherlock would be proud of, they would ask him if he felt bad about what he did, which would imply the question of if he felt guilty. He would look that someone in the eyes and answer honestly, because John was a soldier, not a liar.

He didn't feel anything towards the people he killed. Not guilt, not remorse, and certainly not pity. What guilt had they shown when they torched the church and let those kids and their teacher burn alive? What remorse did they have when they kidnapped young children and then left their bodies for their families to find? What pity did they have when they murdered innocent people? If they had the ignominy to not feel any of that, then John would treat them accordingly.

His phone rang three times.

Another assignment.

He'd have to take the night shift at the clinic again.

* * *

Sherlock did not like snow, so, naturally, he now found himself in the city that was on record as having the highest annual snowfall; 9.3 metres of snow per year. Disgusting. He didn't care for sunny days either, but this,  _this_ , was unbearable.

He felt cold all the time. He didn't need this to make it worse. At least if John was there he would chide Sherlock for not tying his scarf tight enough or buttoning his jacket or, god forbid, smoking a fag for the warmth. But John wasn't there, and Sherlock was forced to ponder on all the things John  _might_  do instead.

John might be off enjoying the small mountain down of Damüls, Austria. John might throw a snowball at him when he least expected it and say "Christ Sherlock, you look like a fucking barbet with wet hair, you know that, right?". John might stumble through rudimentary German when he ordered his food-although he was always good at picking up useful phrases (must have been from his time in the army)- and then marvel as Sherlock broke out in flawless German, complete with accent, proclaim it  _amazing_  or  _marvelous_  and demand that Sherlock teach him before he was distracted by hot food.

But he couldn't think about John now. That never led anywhere productive. They were night thoughts, best saved for when the sun went down or the lead was cold and he could let his mind breathe. Let himself ease into those memories like hot water, boiling and bubbling with John, only ever with John, the burn of his smile, the sound of his laugh, his -

Stop.

Bookmark it. Come back later.

His contact walked into the unassuming diner off the main street and sat across from the world's only consulting detective who was very, very irritated. But what else was new.

"How are you finding Damüls, Mr Holmes?" The contact smiled.

"Utterly disheartening." Sherlock said, his eyes flicking to the man across from him. He and John had the same colour hair, a vague ash-blonde, it was even cut rather similarly— _don't think about John_. "There's a security camera, in the corner above my right ear, so keep your eyes on me." The man's eyes start to move to the camera but Sherlock banged his hand on the table. "Eyes. On. Me." He hissed at the startled contact.

"You've changed, Mr Holmes." The man begins slowly. "You're different from the last time we met. More...agitated. Jumpy."

"I have acclimated to altered circumstances."

"I remember reading about that hospital, Bart's." The man said with a smile. "I thought it sounded odd. Didn't seem like you were the type for suicide." The contact's eyes glinted. "So, what happened?"

"Nothing of importance to you." Sherlock answered coldly. "Do you have what I asked for?"

"Ja." The contact nodded, sliding a single piece of paper towards him. "Veliky Novgorod."

And with that Sherlock left, leaving behind a flurry of cold air and a roll of coloured bills.

* * *

He had been foolish to assume that he was safe in his house.

The man had chosen perhaps the worst place to barricade himself, in a room where one wall was completely lined with ceiling-to-floor length windows. Windows that could be opened from the balcony outside. That poor, stupid bastard. He'd never learn. None of them ever learned.

In the comfort of their own wealth people were careless to their own safety. They thought that money would protect them, but money was the thing that usually ended them. People were so utterly predictable.

The man sat in his chair, clutching a Sig Sauer like a priest with his cross. Both methods were as ineffectual at stopping him as the other.

"You would have been safer in the bathroom." A voice said from behind him. "There's only one way in that you have to focus on."

The man turned, coming face to face with  _him_. With the Golem.

The man raised his gun and fired.

_Click._

He pulled the trigger again. Twice. Three times.

_Click. Click._

_Clickclickclick._

He'd already found where the man kept his bullets hours earlier. Honestly. He'd have to try harder than that. It's like he was  _asking_  to be killed.

The man sighed, shutting his eyes.

"You can look at me if you want." The voice said. "It's alright. Wouldn't want the last thing you see to be that fucking awful wallpaper."

The man looked up at him.

"You look different than I thought you would. You're much—" He was cut short as a quiet bullet entered his frontal lobe and exited out of the back of his brain. He collapsed to the floor, bleeding from that small hole planted so much like a third eye in the middle of his forehead.

"Sorry I disappointed you." The voice answered coldly. "But you are rather late. I'm afraid you couldn't get my usual treatment."

Gloved hands softly pulled the cell phone from the dead man's hand, clutched so tightly around it. Why did he even bother with such an obvious passcode?

"Veliky Novgorod." The Golem muttered. He looked at the corpse. "At least you're useful."

His phone rang three times.

* * *

John sighed, his breath steaming in the cold air.

His target had been a no-show. That happened sometimes. Plans were derailed, people cancelled on other people, someone decided to pop into the store or got caught in traffic. Various external factors all lead to a disappointing night and no pay.

He had just finished packing when he saw it. That stretched shadow across the walls, like someone had been strapped into a rack and pulled until their limbs popped out of their joints and turned to inhuman putty. That shadow that he had seen once before, when he aimed his gun at it and threatened death if it did not let go of the man it held.

That shadow made his heart pound harder than it had in three years. Something to marvel at, since he had gone through training to ensure that it wouldn't be so out of control, at least not while he was working.

_Sherlock would be proud–_

John shook the thought off. Now was not the time. Save it for later. Keep focused.

He slung his bag over his shoulders, pulled down his nondescript cap and followed, against his better instinct.

His heart had not pounded out of fear or excitement or some emotion that he had learned to compress and compartmentalize for later. His heart had pounded because seeing that shadow had broken all logic. It was so  _illogical_  that logic wasn't even a factor anymore, it was something left in the dust as his heart sped away.

It was illogical, because he had learned the Golem's real name, Georgei Kurgazov.

It was illogical, because John himself had watched Georgei Kurgazov die, watched him bleed out underneath his hands, watched the light leave his eyes nearly two years ago.

It seemed that people could come back from the dead now.

But—if nothing else—if the Golem could return, then why couldn't Sherlock?

Apparently  _Sherlock_  was all that ran through John's mind, riding on the back of oxygenated blood that thundered through his brain.

He would follow the Golem; that much he knew already.

He would follow because, for a split second, he had misplaced those long, gangly limbs as belonging to someone else, someone that had been long dead for four years, and that split second was all his convictions needed.


	3. m morstan

It wasn't often that their employees called them since it was usually the other way around, and they even less frequently called angry.

John was an oddity to them, a truly unique oddity.

He called after he lost sight of that stretched shadow as it ducked and swerved through the alleyways until John lost it in confusion, stopping at a dead end.

His heart was still pounding as he dialled the agency's number.

"Where is the Golem?" He asked as soon as he heard someone on the other line pick up.

"John?"

Good, he got Mary. At least she might answer his question.

" _Where is the Golem_?"

"John, calm down, you shouldn't be getting upset while you're working. You know that's not good for—"

"The target was a no-show. I'm off the clock and therefore free to feel upset." John huffed.

"What about—"

"No, that's done too. I'd like my question answered, please."

"The Golem is dead, John. You know that. You  _saw_  it. I did too."

"No, Mary, he's not. I saw him tonight."

"You— you actually saw him with your own two eyes?"

"Yes. Well—not exactly. I saw his shadow and I pursued, but I lost him."

"His shadow? That's all?"

John suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

"Mary, you've seen him. You know no one else could have that same shadow. No one else looks like the fucking grim reaper."

"It could be a trick of the light, John."

"I know what I saw."

Mary sighed.

"You're going to make me file an information request on a shadow?"

"I'm not  _making_  you do anything. You know me, Mary. You know I don't lie."

"Alright…I'll start the paperwork. Meet me at the Drop-Off in half an hour. But, before I start, are you on any legal or illegal substances?"

John paused, chewing his gum.

"Does gum count?"

"I'll take that as a no, then. Half an hour, John."

"Thank you."

* * *

Of all of his 'coworkers', he liked Mary the most. She was kind and understanding and supportive where everyone else was distant and silent and professional, even though their jobs weren't exactly the most professional ones out there; in fact, seeing someone's brains be blown out from their skull and knowing you did it was rather personal. Whatever he may have felt about his other peers, Mary was special. She and Molly Hooper could have been twins with their sunny dispositions in such grim jobs.

Christ, how long had it been since he phoned Molly? Must be nearly a year…on the most recent Anniversary she had called him to talk, but he was in the middle of targeting a drug kingpin, so he let it go to voicemail. He had meant to call back afterward, but it turned out the kingpin knew he was being watched and had posthumously sent someone to Baker Street. John had taken care of them easily, so quietly that he hadn't even woken Mrs. Hudson. Honestly, thugs these days just didn't know how to properly sneak up on someone-

"How do you do it, John?"

He blinked and looked up at Mary. They had met at the Drop-Off, a local 24 hour coffeehouse that many workers liked to frequent, if only to prove they too had a sense of humour.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're the only clipper that's not on anything. No drivers, no cigarettes, nothing."

"Caffeine." John said, holding up his half-empty cup.

"You know I didn't mean coffee."

"I don't know." John shrugged. "I guess since I've seen the damage it can do I know not to get into it. Plus I'm a doctor, and I know what that stuff can do to you."

"But doesn't it…hurt? Doesn't it bother you?"

_T_ _hey would ask him if he felt bad about what he did, which would imply the question of if he felt guilty._

He looked at Mary for a moment.

John was a soldier, not a liar.

"No." He glanced out the window. "I mean, I know some clippers do what they do for the money or—well, it's usually for the money, isn't it?" They both smiled. "But they get addicted to whatever they're into because they can't deal with what they're doing, can't reconcile their feelings with the actions that caused them. I don't feel anything about it, so I feel fine."

"Are you?" Mary asked, concern knitting in her brow. "Fine, I mean."

"I suppose so, in a general sense. Nothing to complain about."

_No violin at three in the morning. No fingers in the fridge. No flatmate sulking about on slow days. I should be throwing a parade._

Mary stared at him a moment.

"Do you miss him?"

Like the rest of London, Mary knew the name Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the rest of London, however, she knew the name John Watson much better. Sometimes he wondered just how she did it, how she could tell what he was thinking, especially when he was thinking of  _him_ , when his thoughts drifted unfiltered to Sherlock.

"Every day." He answered without hesitation because it was the truth so why should he hide it?

"You don't have to be strong all the time, John. You're allowed to break once in a while. I saw your file, from a year after what happened at St Bart's...from, you know, before you started. I know your landlady found you, put in a call for an ambulance, and when DI Lestrade was called in he had to hit you awake...John." She paused. "John, you have to know that you can tell me anything, anything at all, and I'm not going to see you any less than what you are."

"And what am I?"

Mary looked at him but there wasn't pity in her eyes. Something else. Concern?

"You're a man who's doing the best with what he's been given, no matter the cost."

They sit for a moment in silence and John thinks that, in another life, in a normal one where he'd never known the name Sherlock Holmes, Mary might have been the girl he dreamed of at night and woke up to in the morning.

What might have been.

"Did you file the request?" He asked calmly.

Mary pursed her lips, clearly wanting to talk to him about other things, but she allowed the change of subject. That was one of the reasons why he liked her. She didn't pry.

"I sent it in, yeah. But I don't understand, John. You know the Golem is dead."

"Then what did I see tonight?"

"I don't know what you saw, and you don't know what you saw, so it seems we're at an impasse."

"What does that mean?"

"It means—"

Her phone began to ring. "Bugger, sorry, wait a mo'—Hello?" Her face turned to the look she had when the news was neutral, not particularly good or bad. "I'll tell him. Thank you."

John said nothing after she hung up, waiting for her to tell him.

"Veliky Novgorod."

"What about it?"

"That's where you're going after you head home, pack up your things, go to the airport, and get on your plane tomorrow."

"Wonderful. Always wanted to go to Russia."

"But...I didn't say it was in Russia."

"I do own a spherical object with the world written on it. It's called a globe. I don't know if you've heard of it."

"Enough sass out of you. They'll send you the instructions."

She stood and he followed.

"I'll see you when I get back."

She stared at him a moment as if she was going to say something before she looked at her watch and sighed.

"Hopefully...not at 3 am." She said tiredly.

"Why not?" John grinned "That's your shift."

She smiled.

"Goodbye John. You be careful with that charm. It's quite potent. Lethal in large doses."

He smiled and hugged her. Her hair was soft and golden like a sunrise, but he wished it was the colour of midnight, lined with curls of ink.

"Bye Mary."

There it was again. That look as if she wanted to say something else.

He watched her leave and cross the street to the nondescript building the agency worked out of.

He'd have to call Molly later, it seemed. He had to pack all the warm clothes he owned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented/kudos'd(I'm still getting the hang of AoOO)! They really keep this ship sailing. Unfortunately, though, this ship is not currently flying the John/Mary flag.


	4. the court

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
> 
> Walkers with the sun and morning,
> 
> We are not afraid of night,
> 
> Nor days of gloom,
> 
> Nor darkness-
> 
> Being walkers with the sun and morning."
> 
> \- Langston Hughes

 

* * *

The red bricked Kremlin lay in front of John Watson, formidable in its simplicity and separated by the shimmering and calm, cool waters of the Volkhov. A local had given him a quite enthusiastic history of it before he finally politely interrupted and asked where he might find Yaroslav's Court was and perhaps a nice lunch as well. The local's answer was just as excited as if John had asked where he could find the entire history of Novgorod and then vigorously and extensively complimented his mother.

Yaroslav's Court was just as scenic as he'd expected.

A giant series of arches that he had mistaken for an aqueduct from far away comprised a large exaggerated pen of sorts, a giant fence that vaguely resembled the Colosseum, pristinely white washed as it stood guard over the Volkhov River, which ran smoothly in front of him, the lazy current lapping at the cool wind, continuously turning as if it were tanning itself under the clear, bright day. Each arch was a world all it's own, a quiet den of privacy, for an iron fence running behind him separated him from the park and each of his sides where blocked by the curving beam. Standing underneath the arch gave him a sense of comfortable stillness, like arms reaching up to cage him in and protective hold. Sound floated from all sides, conversations and chatter and laughter. He wouldn't be surprised if at night the spot turned from scenic tourist hangout to scenic hangout to buy drugs and other illicit materials. 

He felt peaceful. He didn't feel that often, so he knew it when it bloomed inside, a clear calm so much like cold river water. A boat slowly cruised over the water, tourists snapping pictures over the railings. He wasn't proud enough to call it arrogance, or indomitability, but he felt powerful. These people and he were not alike, and he knew that. He was apart from them, another category all his own now, the newest outlier, the outcast, the social oddity. Sherlock was no longer the only member of that isolated tribe—

"Don't be stupid."

John's head snapped up, his gaze darting from the river to scan his surroundings. Nothing much to look at. A few tourists taking pictures, locals sunbathing on the grass, people walking dogs. A boy nearby him coughed.

That was Sherlock's voice, unmistakably. But there was no conceivable way on this earth that it what he had heard. This wasn't a good sign, if he was imagining his dead best friend's voice.

He must finally be losing it.

* * *

Sherlock Holmes, very much alive and very much irritated, stared in exasperation at his new contact.

"They're sending me children now?"

"I am 19, sir." The boy replied defiantly in a thick Slavic accent.

"I have no earthly idea why you stated your age thinking it might change my perception of you." Sherlock said plainly. "Because it didn't. And your accent is particularly telling. You were born in southeastern Bosnia, am I right? Somewhere around Sarajevo?"

The boy gaped.

"And since you're 19," Sherlock continued, "You were born during the Bosnian War, which means your mother fled with yourself and your older, red-headed sister after your father was killed somewhere around 'Ulica Zmaja od Bosne', commonly known as 'Sniper Alley', I'm guessing sometime before it became a known civilian death spot, so he must have been running an errand, and since the snipers didn't spare children you obviously weren't there. His death forced to you to be the man of the house virtually your entire life, hence the chip on your shoulder and your eagerness to tell me your age."

He stared at the boy, who looked at him blankly. A hurt anger had curled itself into the lines of his brow. Sherlock expected a punch to the face and welcomed it, if it meant feeling something. Somewhere he knew that no punch could ever send his blood into a dazed shock like John's did all those years ago in that desperate alley fight behind  _that_  woman's flat.

The boy didn't hit him.

"You're wrong."

"Wrong?"

Impossible.

"My sister's hair is brown." The boy said calmly. "My mother's is red."

Sherlock smiled. He'd have to tip this kid.

"My mistake."

He half-expected the boy to ask how he knew all these things, as John once did, but, again, he was surprised.

"You know you're being watched, yes?"

"What makes you say that?"

The boy squinted into the distance before turning his gaze back to him and shrugging.

"Common sense, sir. The only way to look around these arches is to lean over the fence," He indicated the iron fence beside them, "So you wouldn't know if someone was on either side, listening, which they must be since you're a criminal and all, and so you must be wanted for something somewhere—"

" _Don't_ ," Sherlock snarled quietly, " _ever_  call me a criminal again."

The boy stared at him a moment and Sherlock got a sense of vague amusement at the realisation that he was being deduced.

"So you track them, then?"

"If you wanted to be simple, you could say that, yes."

"It's usually one or the other." The boy shrugged. As his shoulders moved, Sherlock could see a dark scar spidering up from one side of the boy's neck from underneath his jacket, so much like John's. His father hadn't died alone, then. His death gave his son something to remember him by, something to live with forever.

"Do you have what I asked for?" He asked.

"Yes," The boy answered, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, "But I was told to keep it at—"

"Yes, yes, I know. I ordered it to be left there." Sherlock said irately. "You have the address?"

The boy nodded and handed him the paper.

"Well, thank you for your help." Sherlock paused, taking a moment to look him up and down as he folded the paper away. "You should feel special, you know. I don't say that often."

"I want to come with you."

Sherlock stared at him. He reminded him of John.

"Don't be stupid." Sherlock scoffed.


	5. beliye nochi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Sun's rising from the river  
> Nature's miracle once more  
> Will light the world
> 
> But this light  
> Is not for those men  
> Still lost in  
> An old black shadow"
> 
> "Oh My Love" - Riz Ortolani
> 
>  
> 
> Yep. Just quoted off the Drive soundtrack. No regrets.

 

* * *

Where had he gone wrong?

...

Okay. That was stupid. He knew  _exactly_  where he had gone wrong.

He had trusted the wrong person. Rule number one that the agency had spent hours drilling into him, and he had gone and fucked it up.

No one, not even Sherlock could save him now. John would be the luckiest man in existence if he lived to see the next day.

It was all his fault.

All his fault.

So many things he could've done that his fear had sent into a screaming halt.

He could have tracked Sherlock down. That hurt the most. He had the resources through Mary, but he hadn't done anything.  _He_   _hadn't done anything._ He had been afraid of the results, had been afraid of sending someone to track him down and report that Sherlock really was dead and John had imagined his voice that day outside of the Novgorod Kremlin and that Sherlock Holmes was surely and absolutely dead, that there was no trace of him on any corner of this earth except for the grave he lied in.

Now John would never know. He had thought once, staring at that door, that if he never knew what had happened his whole life, he might die a happy man. That was foolish. He should have searched; he should've scoured the globe until he found that gangly, black-coated, blue-scarfed, brilliantly stupid detective. If their positions had switched and John had been the one to leave, Sherlock would have found him by now, undoubtedly. Sherlock would have run himself ragged to find his doctor. Sherlock would never have given up, like John did. Sherlock would never have run away, like John did. John had gone sprinting around the world, trying to escape the shadow that Sherlock had cast over him, but it was like running from an eclipse. Sherlock could not be escaped.

John had no choice now but to wait to fall back into the grave with him.

His 'contact', that traitorous fucker, had met him at Yaroslav's Court, as arranged, but his information had been faulty and vague. John should have realised it was a trap. He should have done many things, like break that bastard's neck before he could talk, or at the very least shoot his legs out from under him. It would only be the kind thing to do to repay him for whatever hell he was about to go through. Unfortunately, it hadn't gone that way. It had gone more the way of a choloroformed rag and weakening resistance.

He wanted them to end it quickly. If he wanted anything in his life, that was it. If his fears about Sherlock were true and the detective really was deteriorating in his grave, then good on those that were about to kill John. He hoped they did whatever they had planned for him fast. He wanted it over and done with. He wanted to see Sherlock again. He wanted to sit with his best friend and know that nothing was going to stop him ever again, wanted to know that nothing was ever going to come between them. He doubted that he'd make it to heaven after all he had done, but, then again, Sherlock probably wouldn't make the cut either. At least they'd have eternity together.

He was strapped naked to some sort of gurney, which sounded foreboding at first, but when you've been strapped to a cold plate of metal for three hours you tend to become more annoyed and uncomfortable than frightened. The room was empty when he woke, and so it remained until he heard the door open and shut.

That was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

How odd it was, that fated had scripted John Watson to die not one block away from the house where Sherlock Holmes was sitting, quietly picking at a plate of steaming varenyky and thinking, as always, of John.

John would like varenyky, those little doughy dumplings. John would like the buttery taste. John would ask for seconds. John would accept the family's insistent offerings of vodka and bread. John would do all those things that Sherlock couldn't. To this family, Sherlock was a weird, bitter alien. He supposed he wasn't doing the good name of England any favours.

Mikheia looked at him. That odd little boy with that odd little spider scar. Sherlock was, at once, both pleased and annoyed that he had accepted his offer of dinner.

"You're not hungry?" He asked between mouthfuls of bread. Sherlock blamed his hunger for his manners, but he also understood it. He had run this boy ragged all over Novgorod looking for the address before finally accepting a bombed out building in front of him, recently ravaged by fire, as the last known address of his contact and crossing his name off the list. Someone had gotten to him first, it seemed. 

"Not particularly. I try not to eat while I'm working."

Mikheia shrugged. His mother asked something in Russian and he answered nonchalantly. His sister hadn't taken her eyes off Sherlock since he came in the door and he had purposefully avoided her gaze. It didn't make him uncomfortable, but he knew that if he looked at her and acknowledged her fawning he would say something offensive and that would certainly make the rest of the table uncomfortable. Distantly, John reminded him to keep good guest etiquette.

"She says she can pack you some for later, if you'd like?"

Sherlock pursed his lips. He could save money if he accepted, but then he'd also have to be polite. Decisions, decisions. He smiled. It felt rubbery.

"Yes, tell her that would be most appreciated."

He never dug his rubber smile out when John was around. He never had to.

Mikheia talked to his mother for a few moments, and she smiled warmly at Sherlock. He didn't want to be unkind to her. John must be rubbing off on him. Or he  _had_ , rather.

As the family began clearing off the table, Mikheia shrugged on his jacket in the tiny foyer. Sherlock stared at him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm coming with you."

"What gave you that idea?"

"You let me follow you the whole day; you came to my home for dinner. Why would you do that if you didn't need something out of me?"

Sherlock felt a cold smile come upon him.

"I know Russian, English, French and even some German. I'm still useful to you and I still need money. So, Mr. Holmes, say hello to your new translator, sir."

Mikheia held out his hand. Sherlock didn't take it. He found this boy's panache admirable. Most people wouldn't. Most people would be cowed or politely excuse themselves from the situation, intimidated by the force with which this boy imposed himself on the world. But, seeing as Sherlock didn't belong to that particular tribe of men, he nodded.

"Fair enough."

Mikheia relaxed, smiling. His twin canines were sharp. The far left incisor was chipped. Judging by his circumstances, it was probably from opening some kind of tin can with his teeth. His mother called out something from the kitchen and he laughed.

"What did she say?"

"She asked if the scarecrow needed bread too, along with his hay."

Sherlock felt an amused grin flicker up.

"Tell her that if she is willing to offer it, I accept."

Mikheia replied in a short, hearty bark.

"You know your way back to the hotel?"

"It's a  _Beliye Nochi_ , sir. A white night. The sun doesn't go down for two more hours, if it goes down at all."

"But it's already 8 o'clock."

Mikheia and his sister laughed.

"These are common in the summer, here. I thought you'd have realised that Russia is not England, sir."

Must have been deleted, then.

"You are...far away from home?" Mikheia's sister finally spoke, her voice soft but strong with the confidence that seemed to run in her family.

"Yes. Quite far."

"And in your home, there are people waiting for you?"

"Yes, though waiting may not be the term I'd use."

"As long as there is an empty chair when there shouldn't be, someone will wait for you."

Sherlock frowned as Mikheia opened the door.

"You're assuming this someone knows there's someone to wait for. Goodnight. Thank you for the food."

He turns and steps outside, Mikheia saying a few words to his sister before following him.

The night outside, if it could be called so, looked just like early evening had. The Kremlin, a dark red like dried blood, was silhouetted against the light past the river, standing guard over the tiny little apartment like a sentry. Sherlock wondered if it was abandoned or being put to good use. Judging by its isolated architecture, it was probably in use by the government. He had no way of knowing that, as he clutched the warm tin of varenyky and bread and thought of how John would have enjoyed the view, John Watson was trapped in the bowels of the Kremlin, waiting for their reunion.

"You know," Mikheia continued, "For a man very smart as you, you can be very stupid sometimes."


	6. the devil is in the beats

John woke up.

That was very good.

That was also very bad.

He hurt all over, every muscle and tendon and strained vein caught in a fiery pinch. He could see dry blood crusted on parts of his arms.

Sherlock was nowhere in sight.

It seemed to John that that was what hurt most.

He was still alive. That meant no Sherlock. But…it also meant that he could try to escape.

Whoever had him here wanted to prolong whatever they were doing to him. Needless to say, John didn't care much for that idea.

The uncomfortable belt that stretched across his chest and strapped his arms down was thin, pliant and durable…which meant it would be hard to break out of. Not impossible…but hard. He closed his eyes. Quietly took a deep breath and let it out. He jerked up hard, bringing all of his upper mass and weight forward harshly, and heard the belt snap underneath the gurney, clattering to the floor. Someone was bound to have heard that, and if not then the clanging metal noise as he untied his feet would be what gave him away.

Ever since Moriarty, John did not liked to be strapped to anything. It made him nervous. Hell, it would make anyone nervous.

He looked around for his clothes, which were nowhere in sight. He sighed and moved to stand on the cold linoleum before his legs promptly gave out from under him. He groaned and reached up to grab the metal gurney, pulling himself back up. He wobbled on unstable legs.

What exactly had they done to him?

Someone burst through the door a moment later then was swept up in a blur of motion as John knocked them out cold. He wasn't aiming to kill, not when he didn't know where he was and certainly not when he didn't have to. The agency had been sure to teach him a number of manoeuvres he could use, so his arsenal was ample enough to where he didn't even have to knock two people out the same way, something his army training only built upon.

He looked down at the unconscious someone and sighed.

Looks like he'd be escaping wearing women's trousers.

As much as he dreaded it, there was no use running naked through the halls…

That was something Sherlock would do.

* * *

John opened the door, stepping out into the hallway in women's slacks. There was something he'd never thought he'd do. Check that off the list of things he never wanted to do again.

As he closed the door, he self-consciously tugged at the waistline. The trousers were a little snug, but made of some kind of smooth material that let his skin breathe easily. Good, proper trousers for running away in.

He heard the pound of oncoming footsteps, of boots on tile, so security must be on their way. No sooner had he come to that conclusion than two darkly clad officers rounded the corner.

" _Vy_!" One shouted, raising a gun as the other ran forward. Elongated barrel, smaller firing chamber…John could tell a tranquiliser gun from a real one when he saw it.

He turned to face them and caught a small dart in his shoulder. Wincing (and mentally cursing), he quickly plucked it out and stabbed the oncoming guard in the neck with it, carefully hitting the jugular, before reaching into the fallen man's belt, drawing his gun, and shooting the other in the chest as he rushed at him.

They were aiming to shoot, but not kill.

Then so would he.

Both crumpled at his feet and he swayed a moment before righting himself. He unbelted the man in front of him and quickly buckled it around his own waist, taking both men's ammunition and security passes.

John Watson was not a man to be experimented on.

* * *

Sherlock Holmes was not a man for small conversation. He had to hand it to Mikheia for trying so persistently, but after his fortieth breech of blessed silence, he was starting to wear on Sherlock's nerves.

"And here, it is the Novgorod Kremlin. Sort of like our watchtower or soldier barracks or fort or what have you…"

Sherlock suddenly perked up. Something interesting, finally.

"What is it used for now?"

"Now? Now, it is a tourist site, but it is also government mandated. It is used for research, they tell us."

"And you believe them?"

"You say that like there is another option to choose."

"They don't tell you."

"Of course not. The government tells us what is necessary, as does yours. But no one makes a fuss if it is not disclosed the way they think it should, the way they do in Britain or America."

"Why?"

Mikheia shrugged. "I suppose we have learned not be a curious people. Curiosity, it was a death sentence with Stalin. People still fear a man who is decomposing under their feet."

Sherlock sympathised. Moriarty's memory lingered still, in the dark nests that he hadn't burned away yet.

"Do you think we could get inside?"

"I do not think they offer extensive tours, sir. Admission is free, but they do not want you wandering—"

"What do you say to us having our own little tour?"

Mikheia frowned.

"I am not so sure about that. You are a visitor to the country and if you are caught in places you do not belong, you will not be treated courteously."

"I just want a look around."

"That is not how it works here, sir. This is not England. You cannot just have a look around a government facility without the proper passcodes or papers or identification."

"Don't I know it." Sherlock smiled his 'please-do-what-I-say-look-at-all-this-charm' grin. "You know the inside of the Kremlin well, then?"

"Reasonably, yes. My friend's father works inside. And you cannot toss the sheep fur over my pupils. I know what you are querying."

"The phrase is 'pull the wool over your eyes', and I am doing no such thing. I don't want a  _tour_. I want to visit one room and one room only."

"And what room might that be?"

"The archives. Can you get me in?"

"Why?"

"Our friend, the one whose home was burned down, I want to find him. See if there's anything on him."

"Then maybes and perhaps I can…but we can get lunch now, yes? And you must not take anything from the archives. That is my only scruple. In fact, when the Kremlin was built—"

"If I agree, will you stop talking?"

"Indubitably."

"Then it seems I have no other alternative if I want to extract any modicum quiet out of you—" Sherlock paused, turning to Mikheia. "You planned that, didn't you? You were exceedingly loquacious in the hopes that I would become desperate enough to agree to your terms."

Mikheia stared at him, hands behind his back, with a boyish grin on his face.

"I do not know what you mean, sir. May I lead the charge, then?"

"Certainly."

"Good…" Mikheia smiled before his stomach started to growl. "But lunch first. Since you are the one with the crazy ideas, you are the one who will be paying."

* * *

They knew where he was now. The alarm had been sounded or whatever they used to alert the staff of the facility.

John treaded the halls carefully. The electricity in the wing he had been trapped in had been cut off, nearly locking him inside, but he had managed to slip through the doors before they shut. It was only a matter of time before they realised exactly where he was, once they checked all the wings. He would be found through process of elimination if he didn't find a way out soon.

The lights began to flash above him like it had been someone's idea of imitating a mediocre nightclub, but John knew what it meant. They were about to quarantine the wing he was in.

He ducked behind a wall as the lights flashed off and waited for two more officers to stride past him on their way to the wing where he had been strapped to that hellish bed. There was no use wasting the darts he had on them. They weren't a threat if they didn't notice him.

He had to get out.

3...

The lights turned on.

2...

He had to run. Now.

The lights shut off.

1...

As he raced through the dark halls, adrenaline pumped through him like liquid sunlight, brightening his blood until his heart was bursting like an imploding supernova with every beat. He was moving in hyper-time, no longer noticing the cold pain that pervaded every crevice of his body or the sudden dizziness that crashed onto him in waves, like he was being pushed and battered in the pull of a riptide.

As the lights turned back on, a shadow passed over the wall down at the end of the hallway, long, towering, elongated and—and—

John skidded to a halt, nearly tripping himself.

The Golem was here, just around the corner ahead.

But, that was impossible…A dead man can't just simply sit up and walk around and stalk through the halls, looking for an obscure doctor with an obscure history in an obscure city. There was no faking the Golem's death, no faking that slit jugular, no faking those death rattles, no faking the light leaving his eyes. That was absolutely, unequivocally  _impossible_.

John seemed to be dreaming of many impossible things lately. He'd have to stop before they got the better of him.

The shadow paused, as if it could hear John's heart beating madly against his chest, as if he could smell the sweat that slicked John's hair to his ears or feel the vibrations of John's pulse as it travelled through the floor like the tremors of an earthquake.

The shadow paused, and then moved on. The lights turned off.

The floor shifted beneath his feet, soft waves rolling underneath the tiles like he was bobbing out in the ocean.

John had to get out. He had to get out  _now_ , before the Golem came back. Before they could catch him again and do god knows what.

The lights turned on and began to flash.

He paced the halls, a pathogen in a clean bloodstream. The lights flickered faster above him.

He couldn't feel fear now. He wouldn't let it cloud his rationale. It wasn't worth the cost.

The room grew hot, baked in sun like he was inside an oven. The floor morphed to gritty sand. He could taste it; his throat was parched and dry. The hallway before him was a valley beneath him, green, green with life and water and the enemy.

A long shadow crawled its way up the wall across from him, like a spider. He could hear someone shouting commands in his radio. He raised his tranquiliser gun and took careful aim at the shadow before he felt a solid punch to his right shoulder. Fire licked at the joints, searing through bone and muscle and tendon like he was made of butter. He looked down.

His shoulder, save for his scar and the prick from the dart, was fine and whole. Clean. No blood. No wound. He had imagined it.

But it felt so  _real_.

Quit it. Now was not the time to let your imagination get the best of you. Focus.  _Think_. What would Sherlock do?

He'd assess the situation. He'd reflect on his holdings and think of exits. He'd find a way out.

There were no windows, so he was either underground or they had planted him somewhere that everyone could see but no one would suspect. Now, what was so close that he could be taken with minimal fuss or attention, with no conceivable windows that wouldn't arouse suspicion of the general populous—

Of course. He was an idiot.

He was inside the Novgorod Kremlin.

* * *

"What have you heard about the Golem?" Sherlock asked, watching Mikheia eat his lunch.

Mikheia paused, chewing his food thoughtfully.

"Nothing much. People, they don't like to speak about him."

"But he's known here?"

"Yes, fairly well. But, only by rumours, you know? He is not so much a man as he is a shadow."

"Do you know where I can find him?"

Mikheia coughed as he choked on his bread.

"They only people that know where he is are criminals, like him." He sputtered, gesturing to the river as if it proved his point. "If I knew, if I was a criminal, I probably wouldn't tell you. It is very easy to see that you are a foreigner. Criminals make it their business not to trust foreigners, only rob them."

Sherlock smirked.

"I have my ways of getting them to talk."

* * *

John ran through the slanted corridor, the cool air chilling the sweat breaking over him. The doors were beginning to shut in front of him, just a few more feet, a few more steps—

He skidded through the tiny gap and collapsed on the other side with a sigh of relief. As he crouched on the ground, he felt a weight in the pocket of the woman's trousers he had taken. He reached in and dug out a mobile before cursing his lack of foresight. He should have had the practicality to find it and take it from her before he had started running. If he hadn't found it he probably wouldn't have considered looking until later, when it was too late. Someone was looking out for him then.

He dialled a number. His fingers were shaking, but from what exactly, he didn't know.

Three rings.

"John?"

He sighed in relief.

"Mary…"

" _John_ ," There was a rustle of papers as she moved. "Oh my god, where are you? We've been looking for you for nearly two days—"

"Mary, I'm in the Kremlin. They did something to me while I was unconscious and I had to break out and steal some poor woman's trousers. I don't know what they've done to me."

"You  _stole_ —"

"Yes, we'll talk about it later! Can you get me out of here?"

"Yes, I'll send someone. Head to the south gate. A car will be waiting. Can you find your way there?"

John crouched lower as a guard ran past where he was hiding.

"I think so. They're shutting down the wings after they search through them. I'll try to get to it before they find me."

"Good luck, John."

He hung up, took a deep breath, and turned down the corridor, breaking into a run.

And promptly slamming right into someone.

Before they could react, he drew his gun, wrapped his forarm around their neck, and aimed it at their temple.

"Where is the south—oh for fuck's sake."

He unwound his arm from their neck and pushed them away, gun still trained on them.

This  _someone_ , he was just a boy. He didn't even look to be out of his teen years.

He had at least expected the boy to quiver at the sight of the gun. He stared John in the eyes.  John knew that gaze well enough to know that this kid had seen death and he was not afraid. This boy had mettle.

John would be very sorry to have to shoot him.

"You are the one that's escaped? The one they are looking for?" The boy's accent wasn't Russian, it was something from farther east. Romanian perhaps?

"You could say that, yeah."

The boy looked over him.

"You are…wearing women's slacks."

"Ah." John looked down. "That can also be said, yes."

"You wish for me to tell you where the south gate is so you can escape." It wasn't a question, it was an acknowledgement.

"I'd hate to shoot you."

"I have looked a real gun in the face, sir. That is not a real gun."

"No?" John cocked the hammer. "It shoots like one. Care to see what you'll get from it?"

The boy blanched.

"Are you dangerous?"

"Not to you. Not to civilians. And you aren't wearing a uniform, so that makes you a civilian."

The boy stared at him again. John had the odd feeling that he knew everything about him. It made his spine squirm.

"The south gate is one hallway down, right, and then left."

"Thank you."

For a moment, John considered shooting him. But that would leave him vulnerable to outside attack. They would know that he had helped John. They would know by his clothes that he wasn't supposed to be here. It would expose him to unnecessary aggravation.

John looked at him.

"What's your name?"

"Mikheia."

An officer approached them from behind the boy. John took one glance and shot him cleanly in the hollow of his throat. Mikheia looked with wide eyes at the body, registered the feathered tail of a tranquiliser, and relaxed.

"They don't want you dead, do they?"

"No, I don't think so." He turned to the boy. He wanted to leave him with something, to know this encounter hadn't been imagined. Something to tell others. Maybe John would be a schoolyard legend. That'd be interesting. "Mikheia, my name is John. It was lovely to meet you, and thanks for helping me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm getting the hell out of here and changing these trousers."

John turned and bolted down the hall, missing the swirl of dark coat as Sherlock Holmes rounded the corner and came back to Mikheia.

* * *

Sherlock saw a shirtless man dressed in women's slacks running with his back to him and took a moment to process it. Must be the escaped prisoner he and Mikheia had heard about. He had hair like John's…similar body type too, but it was too muscular to be _his_  doctor, too lean and agile for a simple soldier-turned-civilian. Must be a spy, then, or possibly an international hitman. Or even a failed scientific experiment, but it was a damn good one then, to look like he did. Only—

He saw a flash of dark scar, kissing the man's left shoulder blade.

Stupid. It was probably shadows or sweat or blood. Any number of combinations of things culminating to try and trick Sherlock into seeing what he wanted to. And he very much wanted to see John, but unfortunately John was fifteen hundred miles away, sitting in the flat they once shared and moving on with his life.

"Who was that?" He asked.

"The prisoner." Mikheia replied nonchalantly. He was remarkably calm for having faced down a potentially crazed, armed, and drugged man hunted by the government. An animal backed into a corner. Sherlock noted the tremble in Mikheia's fingers that he most likely didn't even notice himself.

"I figured as much." Sherlock said, staring down at the unconscious guard. "What did he want?"

"Directions." Mikheia said, scratching at his collar, above his scar.

"Naturally." Sherlock stepped over the sleeping body. "Why didn't he shoot you?"

"I think he wanted to. But I helped him, so then maybe he did not want to."

"He could be a threat to your homeland."

"My homeland is not Russia, sir." Mikheia answered, his eyes still on the curve in the wall where that strangely lucid man had run. He hoped he got out. "I do not think he is. A threat, I mean. His eyes were kind. But they were dying."

"Ridiculous. Eyes can't die unless the rest of you does first."

"No, the kindness. It was dying."

Sherlock left the statement in the air and, in a rare occurrence, he did not know what to make of it.


	7. the pech

John collapsed in the back seat of whatever care the agency had conscripted to get him out. He didn't care if it looked good as long as it had an engine and wheels and could get him as far away from that place as possible.

Mary was waiting for him.

"It's alright John." She said quietly, smiling. "We've got you."

He laid his head in her lap and she softly stroked his temples, lulling him into a calm, exhausted sleep.

He dreamed his first dream in years, or at least one that he remembered.

He was back in Afghanistan. A lot of people assumed he had been stationed in some remote desert outpost, but he had actually been assigned near Asadabad, which was more mountainous and lush than Kandahar or whatever people usually pictured when they heard Afghanistan. You could see white-capped mountains in winter bloom in the summer, and lush green would pass under your feet and you would be glad because it meant you weren't in the godforsaken desert. Of course, mountains meant valleys, and valleys meant the enemy could tuck in and remain hidden in the bush, and that was the problem of it all.

In his dream, he had been on the banks of the Pech River, dipping his sweaty, dirty feet in the considerably cooler water.

In his dream, he had been bleeding, but he didn't know from what.

In his dream, Sherlock had been there with him.

John watched as the water sluiced away the dirt and sweat and rawness of the day. The sun felt hotter here than anywhere else, like it focused all its attention on the parched earth he now sat on.

"You're hurt."

He looked beside him, where Sherlock was lounging on the ground. Certainly an odd sight to see since Sherlock rarely ever  _lounged_  anywhere (that meant he was relaxed and John doubted Sherlock even knew the feeling of the word), much less somewhere that was dirty. That's how John knew he was dreaming.

"When am I not?" John replied with a pained grin.

Sherlock scooted forward. Sometimes John suspected his social graces had never passed the blatant, inquisitorial nature of a seven year old.

"Where does it hurt?"

His voice was different than John remembered, and that scared him. He didn't want it to be different. He wanted it to be as he remembered, smooth and dark like scotch. If his voice was different, that meant John was forgetting him. He didn't want to forget. He hadn't refused the agency's offer to just  _forget_  all on his own.

"Everywhere." John answered, because it was true. It hurt everywhere. His head, his knees, his toes, his wrists, his heart. Everywhere.

"I'm sorry, John."

Yes, John Watson was certainly dreaming.

"You shouldn't be." He said with a heavy grin.

"Doesn't mean I'm not."

They sat for a moment, watching the sun reflect off the lazy water, flowing like there weren't bigger things to worry about. The banks of the Pech had always been John's favourite spot to come to if he had any sort of free time when they were re-supplying. Sometimes he had friends with him, sometimes he didn't. He didn't remember feeling acutely alone there until the one friend he actually wanted there with him was dead, his head destroyed by shrapnel. He'd been a good friend too, quiet, intelligent, protective...John would be in a state of denial if he said Sherlock hadn't reminded John of his friend in their first months of acquaintance.

"It's a funny place we're in." Sherlock said, looking around at the swaying trees and leering mountains in the distance.

"What, Asadabad?"

"That's not what I meant."

John tossed a pebble into the water.

"Yeah, I know."

"I miss you, John."

"I know, you stupid genius. I miss you too."

"No one's around to tell me how brilliant I am."

They smiled.

"Poor little genius…no one's around to tell me how stupid I am."

"I never thought you were stupid. In fact, you're one of the smartest idiots out there."

"Funny how I take that as a compliment now…at least, coming from you, of course."

"Have you…moved on?" Sherlock asked quietly.

"Have you?"

"I meant with your life."

"I did too."

"No."

"Well," John laughed humourlessly. "Then that makes two of us."

"I'm sorry, John."

"I told you to stop saying that."

"But I am."

" _Stop it_ , Sherlock. That's not going to get us anywhere now."

Sherlock said nothing, but moved his hand over the scar on John's shoulder. He shut his eyes. As he exhaled, John felt his breath skim along Sherlock's neck, arched in front of him like a column of white marble.

"The kindness is bleeding out of you, John." Sherlock said quietly, and when he drew his hand away it was bloody from a wound that John couldn't see. But he felt it. God, did he feel it.

"I don't want it to." He admitted through clenched teeth.

Sherlock laid a hand on either side of John's face as he stared down at him.

"I know you don't."

Sherlock dipped down, brushing his lips over John's like sunlight skimming over water before he moved up and rested his chin in the crook of John's nose.

"Are you alive?" He muttered as Sherlock pulled away, resting his forehead on John's.

Sherlock's great eyes opened and stared at him.

"That depends on what you mean by alive." He muttered quietly.

"I mean is your heart beating? Are your lungs working? Blood flowing, limbs moving, brain thinking?"

Sherlock closed his eyes.

"What do you want me to tell you, John?"

"Tell me—" John's throat tightened. "Tell me that you're alright. Tell me you're out there, somewhere, waiting for me. Tell me that I can find you if I look hard enough."

"You can always find me. I will never hide from you, John. Never. And if I do, you can hit me as hard as you like."

John laughed softly.

"I hardly think physical abuse will make you want to hide from me less."

"There are many ways to be alive, John. I feel like I am, somehow."

Tears began to drip down John's face. Why now…why ever? But he didn't stop them. He didn't want to. He had never given Sherlock the opportunity of seeing him like this, he had been careful to hide it, so why stop now? What stood in his way?

"John." Sherlock moved forward. "John, you're bleeding. Let me help you. I want to help you." He laid a hand on the scar again. "John." He traced the scar through the blood-soaked shirt. "John." Pressed his lips to it carefully. " _John._ "

He opened his eyes to a blurred, pale shape standing above him.

"Sh'lock?" He muttered, trying to grasp upwards. The shape moved away from him. "Sh—Sherlock, don't go. I'm not—not ready yet."

The room he was lying in was cold and plain. He could feel cold sweat breaking out and slicking over that which had already dried earlier.

"The fever's breaking." Someone said quietly.

"He'll be alright?"

Mary, wonderful Mary. If only she had come along earlier.

"Without a doubt."

"Thank God."

John slipped back into sleep.

* * *

Sherlock woke with the oddest dream lingering in his head.

That was most peculiar. He never dreamed, or never remembered them if he did. He always woke with a million thoughts, and dealing with a little trifle like a dream was not high on his list of priorities. But John had been in this one. That made it skyrocket to the top of the list.

This time, he only woke with one thought, bouncing around in all the free space it could never usually afford.

He had been sitting somewhere he had never been, and John had been doing something he had never done…what was it? There had been water, fresh and salt. There had been sun and wind and John. He only needed one of those things, the rest could rot for all he cared and he wouldn't give them a second thought.

For all his great expanse of memory, Sherlock couldn't remember the rest.

But he remembers the ache in his shoulder as he woke up, something deeper than the tension of just sleeping with his weight it. It was pain. He felt pain. He didn't know why.

If John were there, he'd have an explanation for it, surely. But John wasn't there. Maybe that was why it hurt.

Sherlock sat up a long time after that as he laid out all the things he remembered of John in front of him like stolen knickknacks or souvenirs. All of John's traits, his physical appearance, every jumper he wore, they all lined up to pass in front of Sherlock. At first they pushed and shoved at each other in frantic desperation to be seen, but there was plenty of time to give each one it's just deserved attention. He lay awake and let them undulate before him for the rest of the night.

Mikheia had given him a sideways glance as he met him later that day, but said nothing. Sherlock liked the fact that he didn't talk unless necessary (or to get something out of him, which he didn't so much care for, but admired the tact with which he did it).

Now, sitting on the bus, Mikheia twitched in his seat.

"Tell me." Sherlock said bluntly without looking up, as he paged through his book.

"What?"

"Tell me what's bothering you."

"Nothing's bothering me."

"You can lie to me all your little heart desires. It won't work."

"The man from the Kremlin, the prisoner…" Mikheia trailed off.

"The half-naked loon in women's trousers? What about him?"

"He—I feel like I know him, somehow."

"Did he look familiar to you?"

"That is the problem," Mikheia looked at him. "He didn't, but, on some level, I knew exactly who he was."

"Then your feelings of unease are unjustified. You don't even know his name."

"No, he told me his name." Mikheia said and Sherlock perked up.

"Really? How odd, he was in no position to…why would he tell you his name?"

"Maybe he wanted someone to know who he was in case he didn't get out. Maybe he wanted me to know his name so he could remember that he had one."

"Understandable. A man trapped in the bowels of a government facility where he was most likely tested on escapes and finds that his best bet for rescue in the off-chance that he doesn't make it would be to tell someone his name. Make his mark. Leave evidence that he existed."

Sherlock looked at Mikheia, who scratched at his collar.

"What was his name?"

Mikheia glanced at him then shrugged.

"John."

_John…_

No. impossible.

"Did he…have a last name?"

Mikheia turned at the quietness of Sherlock's voice.

"No. He didn't tell me."  


* * *

John was drowning, choking on the waters of the Pech.

He remembered the graze of Sherlock's lips on his, the sunlight hitting those fluctuating eyes, the sound of his voice—and then he had been pulled into the water like a fish on a line, helpless and flailing as Sherlock watched him from the shore with the saddest, loneliest expression on his face. John could die happily, thrashing about in the water, if it meant he didn't see such utter desolation cross that perfect face again.

The water was heavy with mud and dirt and sand, clogging in his lungs as he was dragged to the bottom of the river. Heavy iron arms wrapped around him, holding him down, pinned against the sand and squeezing the air out of his lungs before they grew soft and pliant, pale and long like bleached bones made of light.

John turned his head.

Sherlock lay behind him, John's weight settling over him in the dark water. He was suspended in form, dark hair floating above him, his face peaceable like an angel descending to earth in clouds of fractal light and geometric entanglements of air. John tried to swim up, but Sherlock's grip tightened, keeping them trapped as they settled into the river's bottom. He struggled against Sherlock's arms, but to no avail; it was as if Sherlock's bones were made of steel. As the air burned in John's lungs, he relented, settling into those long arms. If he were truly to die, if these were his final moments, there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

He turned his head as much as he could and ran his fingers over Sherlock's unmoving face, across a cheekbone and wiping a strand of hair away. He pressed his face into the curve of Sherlock's neck, feeling his lungs darkening, his heart slowing, and he felt better than he had in years, knowing that they were going together.

This wasn't the end, for either of them.

Silt billowed around him like thick smoke as John pushed off of the bottom, the water streaming across his face as they rose upwards, bringing himself and Sherlock out of the murky depths and into the light. As they hurtled towards the light, Sherlock jerked back suddenly, as if the brightness stung him, and sent John tearing out of his arms. As the fire of oxygen deprivation seared through him, sending his blood into a slow burn, John doubled back and darted to his friend, reaching a hand out to grab him.

Closer, closer,  _closer_ , almost—

As he grazed Sherlock's sleeve, John was sucked into the surface

* * *

John woke with a great gasp, feeling the residue of dried tears staining his face, something he hadn't experience for almost three years.

"Sherlock?" He croaked quietly, his voice hoarse.

Someone beside him leaned forward and offered him water, which he gladly took. He squinted where a silhouette sat in front of thin curtains, light gleaming behind them, illuminating them like sunlight through a closed eyelid.

A cool hand touched his forehead. Thin fingers, but average length, not long and spindly like Sherlock's, which must mean—

"Mary."

She smiled, patting down a wayward lock of hair. John could feel the grime of dried sweat all over him.

"Hello, love. You had us worried."

"What happened?"

"After we got you out of Novgorod you became sick, very, very sick. We were told it was your body trying to get rid of whatever was put into you."

"Do you know what it was?"

"No," Mary said, pursing her lips, "but the attending doctor seemed to think it was a combination of hallucinogens and a chemically altered epinephrine synthetic."

"You're telling me they gave me a hallucinogen-adrenaline cocktail and I didn't immediately keel over where I stood?"

"Consider yourself lucky." Mary said, standing and opening a plain folder that lay on the table in front of her. "Now that you're awake we'll be getting you out of here as soon as possible."

"You won't get an argument from me. Where?"

"Bruges."

Silence.

"You're joking."

"I'm not joking, John. They won't be looking for you in Bruges."

"Who in their right mind would go to Bruges?"

"That's the point."

"When do I leave?"

"If you can get up and move without nausea or vertigo, hopefully by tonight."

"You couldn't move me while I was unconscious?"

"I don't think you comprehend just how sick you were, John. You kept muttering about how you were bleeding all over and we even stripped you, but there weren't any wounds to find. You were yelling for water and we brought you some but you coughed it up like it was poison. We were worried you were becoming hydrophobic and possibly even rabid from the way you were shaking. You—" Mary's voice turned soft, quiet. "You kept asking for Sherlock."

John shut his eyes.

"John, we can talk about it you know. If you want to, I mean. I'm here for you—"

"He was right there, Mary." John said quietly, opening his mouth to talk before finding there was nothing to say.

Mary sighed, sadness in her breath. Sadness for him.

"I know it hurts, and I know I can't say anything to make it go away, but I'll tell you this, John. He loved you. I know he loved you. And whatever you feel for him, if it's not love, then it's damn well close to devotion. You are the most loyal, most hard-working, most honest man that I've ever seen, and I've seen more than most would care to. I know you're destroying yourself over him, and it's pointless to tell you that he wouldn't want that, because you know that already. And, from what I gather, he'd feel rather self-important about it, so you'd only be inflating his ego."

"You've got a point, there." John said with a sad grin. Mary looked down at him for a moment.

"You don't owe me anything, but will you please go to Bruges for me? You'll be safe there. You can relax and do whatever you want. I can only grant you clearance for so long, so you have to leave as soon as possible." Her face turned softer now, the seriousness draining out. "I wouldn't be doing this for you if I didn't care, John. The agency wasn't thrilled about you getting caught, but they're not going to leave you to flounder."

"Because I'm still useful?" John smiled bitterly.

"Because you're good at what you do. Because there hasn't been one like you and there probably never will be."

Mary stood.

"The train leaves tonight and all I ask is that you're on it."

John looked at her a moment. She cared about him, about whether he lived or died, she cared that this longing was killing him slowly, that—what had Sherlock said?—that the kindness was bleeding out of him. She cared, and he had to do this for her.

"I'll try."


	8. bitter black

Sherlock closed his eyes and slowly rolled his neck. A cup of steaming black espresso sat in front of him, rocking slightly as the train rattled on the tracks. Mikheia was speaking amiably with a waiter at the bar of the dining car, gesturing to the pot of warm coffee before coming to sit in the booth they now occupied.

He wondered why he had allowed the boy to tag along.

"One cube or two?" The waiter asked as he set a cup of coffee down in front of Mikheia and held out a sugar bowl.

"Ah, no, thank you." Mikheia waved it off politely. "I do not like sugar."

If he trully felt like admitting it to himself, he kept Mikheia around because he reminded him of John.

Mikheia caught Sherlock's slight smile as he stirred in his milk.

"You are not normally a smiling person. What has made you so happy?"

"It's nothing, just…I have a friend who doesn't like sugar as well."

Mikheia made an amused face and stared at him a moment, drumming his spoon on his cup absentmindedly.

"Most people do not like sugar in their liquids. More importantly, most people do not remember such inconsequential things about their friends." He said with a grin. "That means either you are attentive, which I do not greatly doubt, or you do not have many friends to remember things about, so you like to memorise the little things, which I also do not greatly doubt."

"You're right on both counts. I suppose my prowess has rubbed off on you."

"You cannot be held accountable for all the intellect in the world, sir."

"No. Just most of it."

Mikheia did not seem to be deterred in the slightest by his arrogance.

"You have never cared much for friends, have you? Or personal relationships?" Mikheia frowned then. "Never mind, that is too personal of a question. Please forget that I have asked—"

"No, by all means, keep going. You're on a streak."

Mikheia paused, unsure of how to continue. He was considering Sherlock's feelings, something people usually tended not to do. How quaint.

"This friend…he is special to you."

Sherlock looked him once over. This boy was just full of surprises.

"How did you know he's a 'he'?"

"I did not at first, but now you just told me so." Mikheia said with a grin. "This man is important to you, and you must be around him often since you know that he does not like sugar in his coffee—well, tea, since you are British, yes?—but you got this face when you told me about him just now. I have seen you with this face before, sometimes when you think I am not looking or sometimes not, and now I know that whenever I see it you are thinking of him." Mikheia took a sip of coffee then leaned forward with a knowing smile. "Do you love him?"

Sherlock scoffed. He felt John's hand at his wrist, grabbing his pulse.

 "Pity," He sneered. "I thought you were right on the mark too until that came out."

Mikheia could never know how he had felt then, as John was dragged away from his body.

Why was he being so hostile about something so trivial? It was about John. John was never trivial. This was poking at a wound still bruised, purple and yellow and not healing, not even close to healing.

"It is alright if you do." Mikheia shrugged. "Love is love, whatever you want to call it. You can love him like a brother or like a husband; you can love him however you like. It all means the same to me. You can never have enough of it in the world. Like food."

"And what if I did?" Sherlock asked lowly.

Mikheia's gaze snapped to him and a sly smile came on his face.

"You are a cruel man, Mr. Holmes. You had me thinking I was incorrect in my theories."

"Cruelty would imply that I deliberately intended for you to feel pain. I merely wished to state that you are not incorrect, but you were not correct either."

"If you  _did_  love him, then what does it matter to me? What does it matter to anyone? Does he love you?"

"He often showed an immeasurable devotion and infinite loyalty, yes."

"Is that how you classify love, sir?"

"How would  _you_  classify it?"

"I did the asking first."

"I'd like to hear your answer."

Mikheia tapped on his cup, thinking for a moment.

"Love is…it is…" He paused and then began to laugh. "That's what it is! Something so empty and so full at the same time. Something that cannot be stuffed into words. It is what you feel when you come home and someone is waiting for you. It is what you feel when you've been out in the cold and go somewhere warm. It is what you feel when you eat after a long hunger. That is love."

Sherlock had not moved for the entire speech.

"Interesting." He said finally.

"You think I am stupid?"

"No," Sherlock said, leaning forward. "No, I think you're smarter than you've led me to believe." His fingers steepled against one another in reflective thought. "Most interesting…"

"And love? What is it to you?"

Sherlock stared.

What was it to him?

As someone who had never experienced it himself, he couldn't describe it out of a first-hand account. Love was as foreign to him as decaffeinated tea or unused laboratory equipment or not having a body part in the refrigerator.

He couldn't confine love to any constrictions. He had to work with what he was familiar with. He'd have to start with what made him comfortable and then work his way up from there.

What made him comfortable?

Violin. His chair, all angles and quite comfortable. Petri dishes. Tea. Nicotine patches. Striped jumpers. Medical dictionaries. Dodger blue eyes. Libraries. Beige jumpers. Sheets of music. His riding crop. Any kind of jumper, so long as it was John's—

John.

There was a start.

John made him comfortable. John made everything seem comfortable. He could have told Sherlock that he had just drawn a bath of liquid lava, rusty knives and hypodermic needles and that it was utterly heavenly and Sherlock would have given it a try, because if John liked it, Sherlock wanted to like it.

Now…what made him uncomfortable?

Decaffeinated anything. Every person on the planet. Wait. No. Every person except John, a handful of others, and maybe even Mikheia. Crying women, children, men. Crying anything. Jackets with fake fur on the hood that were so puffy you didn't know what was underneath until they were pulled open. Sickness. Not being able to smoke anymore. Indiana. Mycroft's 'assistants'. Being beaten (by anyone, not just _Her_ ). Cabbies. Incorrect change. Westwood. Anything not John.

And so he was, entering into unknown territory, a veritable no-man's-land where the next step he trod could be his last. But he would do it, for John if not for himself.

It could be argued that everything he did was for John, which was an abnormal thing in itself because he never did anything for anyone.

But John. John Watson was special. Very special. The  _most_  special thing to ever have existed in the history of histories.

Was that his answer?

Sherlock blinked.

Only 2.234 seconds had passed since Mikheia had asked his question.

"Love is a liability." He said finally, his voice bland and cold.

Mikheia sipped his coffee in response.

"You will be pardoning me because I do not believe you, sir."

"Why is that?"

A smile bloomed on Mikheia's face.

"Because I know you are lying."

"Really? Tell me how. Is there a tell?"

"I do not need a tell or show you how or where or why or when. It is obvious."

"Obvious." Sherlock repeated.

"You have been threatened with love before, and you ran away because you were afraid. But I know that you are not a coward and that your tail would never be caught between your legs, so you ran for someone else. For who?"

"For  _whom_."

"For  _whom_? For this friend? For your only friend? That would be my best of guesses."

"I ran from him. _For_  him." Sherlock admitted quietly. "I could not be trusted with his life any longer. I think you'll find that I am most careless with the things that have the most value."

"Does he know why you fled?"

John's face above him, utterly desolate, utterly devastated, utterly  _destroyed_ as he grasped at a pulse that Sherlock had been sure to erase.

Sherlock kept his eyes on the window yet he didn't register what he was seeing.

"No."

"And it hurts you?"

"Yes."

"And, if he was here, right now, would that hurt be less?"

"Yes."

"That is why I do not believe you." Mikheia paused, wading the waters to neutral reception. He continued. "You are in love and you do not want to admit it because it is dangerous right now. But there will be a time when it will not be so. There will be a time for you to love without consequence. You went to Novgorod for a reason. You are here for a reason. And that reason is why love is  _not_  a liability to you."

"How can you be so sure?" Sherlock asked, narrowing his eyes in what was supposed to be a penetrating stare but ended up looking to Mikheia like he was just squinting into bright sunlight. "How can you know that it won't have a consequence, when everything you could possibly fathom has a conceivable consequence?"

"It might." Mikheia admitted. " _But_ , the funny thing about love is that if there is a consequence, you do not notice it."

* * *

"Coffee?"

John snapped awake, turning to groggily look up.

"No…thank you." He mumbled before he realized that the waiter had not been talking to him, but to another booth further down. John sighed, burrowing into the corner of his own booth between the wall and window. He loved corners. It meant your back was guarded and no one could sneak up on you. Of course when you were stuck in one that was another matter.

He was awake now, and that meant no going back to sleep. He had always had that problem, ever since Afghanistan, spending countless nights waking up in the middle or near the end and staying up until his day was supposed to begin, getting by on hours of sleep when he needed more, always needed more.

He stared out of the window at the dark landscape passing before him, obscured by the light of the dining car he was in. He must have fallen asleep there after dinner, and if the waiter hadn't woken him, he probably would have stayed that way until Klaipeda.

Honestly, he felt like shit. Like he had slept in a rubbish bin full of liquid putrefaction that clogged his senses and had only woken when it was being compacted in the back of the truck, squeezing his head so tightly it felt like there wasn't even space for his own brain anymore. Sweat dampened the hair by his ears; he could feel the uncomforable warmness prickling under his clothes where it had already dried.

Mary had warned him that this would happen. She had warned him about the side effects that would take the piss out of him until his body got it fully out of his system. He was very tempted in fact to run to the lavatory and hurl his dinner up until he felt better, but he didn't want to make a mess for someone else to clean up, much less get out of his warm, cosy seat to toss his stomach up on cold tile.

She hadn't been lying when she'd told him his temporary detox would be hell. After pumping him full of electrolytes and mild rehydration fluids, they had sent him on his merry way, except it wasn't so merry at all, it was rather miserable. And he knew he had to suffer through it, because what good would complaining do? No one would care. No one could make it go any faster.

And so he burned quietly.

So he bled quietly.

He didn't know, wasn't quite sure exactly, when he was waking or dreaming as the hours passed and the train rocked and his face pressed against the cool glass. Images, silhouettes, passed by, blurred and reflected in the glass. He heard the swishing of clothing, felt the cool air as people passed, heard the floor creak under their steps. A handful of times he heard the distinct flutter of heavy coats and saw blurred swatches of black amidst pale skin.

So he pretended it was Sherlock, pacing about like a mother hen and worrying over his recovery. He chuckled. Now maybe he could sleep, if Sherlock was here. If Sherlock. Sherlock.

He slept.

He dreamed.

He woke.

He began it all again.

* * *

John stood on the cobblestone bridge outside his hotel, the fresh wind brushing his face as he stared out over the muted green canal. The day was overcast, slightly cool, but generally nice. Reminded him of England, if he felt like dedicating this moment to Queen and Country.

He liked Bruges. It was free and open and peaceful and quiet. He needed all of those things right now. His head still hurt, still pounded and pulsed like it was going to implode, but the pain was considerably less, more distant, like he was underwater. He could feel the detox bleeding the poisons out of him as they dripped from his fingertips like hot wax, leaving a calm coolness in its place.

He could call Mary, and let her know he was alright, but that would be silly. She would have access to the hotel records; she'd know he had checked in.

He should call Molly back, but that was just as silly as calling Mary since he had no idea what to say and the kindness of the gesture would be lost in the subsequent awkwardness. He couldn't deal with formalities right now.

He turned away.

Back in his room, silent and immaculately clean.

The vaulted wooden ceiling. The lone spherical shelled light. The plain white walls. The plain, modest bed covered with a soft, welcoming duvet. Modern, but comfortable. It was more accommodating than he had expected.

There was a note on his bed, folded neatly and sealed with a thin blue wax.

Apparently the agency was wasting no time in using his sick leave to their advantage.

* * *

It was a church. That surprised him. Usually the agency was as politically correct as possible; they liked to keep their hands as clean as they could. He supposed this person rather deserved what was coming to them, then.

The name of the church didn't matter much to him. They all got confusing after a while. The point was that it was a church, and that's all he cared to know. It was large and looming and impressive, just like any other old building here, but John appreciated the architecture, dark brick and stones gleaming with silver and gold leaf. It was small, like nearly every other building in the old parts of Bruges, but it was ominous in its simplicity. Built to impress, to modestly announce a vast and private wealth to everyone who saw it.

Getting in was no problem. It was nearly empty at this hour anyways, between masses. All he had to do was take a side glance and slip into a side door. He pulled the bill of his cap lower, casting shadows over his face. The instructions the agency had sent him led him to a small, narrow stairwell and he climbed, clutching his bag tightly so the contents wouldn't rattle and give him away.

His head began to pound again, feeling as if it was tightening in on itself yet also expanding, like a dying star, and he felt himself sway on his feet as he reached the landing. He paused a moment, laying a hand on the cold stone of the stairwell, before he quietly opened the door.

He came out at a small balcony, secluded and tiny, which allowed him the utmost privacy. Quietly, he assembled his gun, smoothing the well-oiled parts together as if he were forming them from primordial clay.

The ceiling was vaulted, which was a slight problem, but not an obstacle. It would create an echoing noise that was sure to be heard, even with a silencer. And since his position was so isolated, all eyes would turn, after the initial shock of seeing someone's brains splattered on the floor, to where the noise had come from, which would lead them to him. He would have to be prepared to aim, shoot, and run as fast as he could.

As he adjusted his scope, his phone buzzed.

_Fifth pew. Black coat, blue scarf._

John leaned over the banister and counted the pews beneath the rim of his hat.

He aligned his scope.

He blinked, letting the image burn behind his eyes, coming up with a half-dozen reasons for why it couldn't possibly be true.

_No…_

He lowered the gun.

He ducked back down, out of sight, and stared through the limbs of the banister at that curly dark hair, at that pale face, at those long legs tucked under the pew in front of him, at that man that was currently a.) not dead, much less six feet under and b.) wasn't currently giving a care in the world that he was alive—alive, right there where John could see him—as if John's life hadn't slipped off the banister and shattered to pieces in front of him.

As if everything was normal.

He had to get out, before he was spotted. He had to get out before he got violently, violently sick and then he'd _hear_  with those damn bat ears of his and come over and find him, John, here about to kill him when he should be recovering in Baker Street like a normal person and he wasn't dead, he wasn't dead, he was here and oh Jesus he had to get _out_ —

At some point, his hands had begun to shake, rattling the gun in his hands.

His head pounded. His throat tightened as he stared at those broken pieces of his life as they lay on the floor at the man's feet, shimmering weakly in the light, the same colour, the same shining cadet grey as his eyes. He felt his lips move in a fervent whisper.

"Sherlock."


	9. soy and squid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's discovered that his newest target is none other than the quite alive Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> Stuff's happening, stars are out of alignment, shit's going DOWN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[Bruges] is a fairytale town, isn't it? How's a fairytale town not somebody's fucking thing?"
> 
> -Ralph Fiennes (In Bruges)

John stumbled out of the church into a side alley and collapsed on his knees, ready to lose his stomach on the pavement, but instead got stuck dry-heaving a breakfast he hadn't eaten. He didn't like to eat before he went out on an assignment. It made him feel slow and heavy. He'd learned his lesson in Barcelona after a particularly taxing paella that nearly led to him getting his head blown off by an irate coke dealer whom John had personally requested because of his known history of woman and child abuse.

John Watson wanted many things at the moment. He wanted to burst inside and see if what he saw was real, he wanted to go pick a fight with whoever was closest so he could get hit, see stars, feel pain, and know this wasn't just a dream like he feared, and he wanted to go back to the hotel and crawl into bed and lay there forever.

But John Watson did none of those things.

He sat in that alley, curled against the wall.

He sat, and didn't stop the tears when they fell.

He sat, and he mourned for his best friend for the first proper time in three years. He mourned for the days he spent doubting himself, thinking Sherlock was dead, and he mourned for that living, breathing man sitting in the church for god knows what reason, because he had now been sentenced to death. John didn't know for what, but if anyone had international enemies, it would be Sherlock.

John was Atlas and the weight of the world had collapsed on him. He felt heavy, his chest felt full of lead, full of heartache and suffering and pain as the heavens crashed down on him and he buckled under its weight, unable to hold it up any longer. He tasted the salty dirt of grief, the iron of blood, the taste of pain and tears and suffering.

All those days of wondering, all those days of loneliness, and Sherlock had been just as alive as he'd ever been. How could John not have figured it out? How many times had he passed Sherlock in the street and not noticed? Relief should not feel this awful, knowing that Sherlock was alive and that the only thing separating them was an old brick wall. But it wasn't just the wall that separated them. It was circumstance. Sherlock was alive, and only because John had not killed him like he was ordered to.

Sherlock was alive.

Sherlock was alive.

Sherlock was  _alive_.

And what had John done? John had run away.

But John had also let him live. He had spared him, and now Sherlock owed him his life, not that he would ever have pulled that trigger.

John started, realising suddenly just what he had done.

 _He had spared Sherlock's life_.

_Fuck._

He was so  _fucked_. So utterly and completely fucked. So fucked that he needed to invent a new word just to describe the extent of how fucked he was.

The agency would not allow Sherlock to live. If John couldn't do it, then they would find someone that would. He could tell them all sorts of stories. The target was a no-show, the shot wasn't clear, the risk of civilian casualties was too great—

But no. No. Those wouldn't work. The agency  _knew_  his history, knew his whole life because he had to disclose it when they hired him. They  _knew_  his relation to Sherlock Holmes, knew they had lived together, knew what they had done (all of London did anyways), and they knew he had requested that the assignments be complete strangers to him. They knew that he wouldn't take Sherlock out.

They  _knew_. So why did they assign it to him?

He had to get back to the hotel.

He had to talk to Mary.

* * *

Sherlock yawned.

 _Boring_.

Mikheia had dragged him to the nearest Orthodox church that morning to receive communion, but they had arrived late, so now he was meeting with the priest to get it. Why a little piece of bread and watered down wine was important to his everlasting soul, Sherlock didn't know or care, but it made Mikheia less anxious and jittery, so he went along with it. And Mikheia agreed to take him to the Russian consulate to find his next contact, so Sherlock supposed that this was his way of thanking him.

The church was well built, structurally sound, and had a pleasant darkness about it. Everything was wooden and old and creaked like the church's old bones when it got up in the morning. Sherlock quite liked old, wooden, creaky things. He liked the idea that someone once sat where he sat and was just as bored as he was. The brotherhood of the bored, externally coerced churchgoers.

The people inside weren't interesting. A widow with three children, one cat, who had burned their breakfast that morning, a meal of bread and eggs, in their kitchen of a flat three blocks south. A man who came here without his wife because she was sick—no, she's having an affair with their neighbour and faked illness for a quick tryst—who rolled his own tobacco and favoured the brothel two streets away after Sunday services.

Sherlock smirked. How dull their lives must be.

Something moved in the balcony to his left and he paused, listening closer. Footsteps, brown suede trainers—size 11—jeans, pressed shirt, possibly a woollen jumper as well. They fidgeted with something, possibly a camera from the way it was being assembled with precise twists and turns. He heard them pause a moment, a still silence settling over the church, before they quietly packed their equipment back up and left in a hurry.

Odd. This place was certainly aesthetically pleasing enough for a photograph. Maybe the shot wasn't as good on the balcony as elsewhere in the church.

He sniffed. Whoever it was used a similar shampoo to John's, a plain, unscented brand that smelled only of cleanliness. Sherlock had never told John how much he liked the smell, how peaceable it was and so unornamented that it complimented anything it was put with. In a way, it was much like John himself.

" _You're tofu, John. Did you know that?"_

Sherlock smiled at the memory.

He and John has been sitting in their flat, eating Chinese food after a particularly exhilarating encounter with a pair of thieves that liked to use acrobatics in their heists.

"Sorry?" John asked as he spooned a forkful of noodles into his mouth.

"You are tofu." Sherlock repeated calmly.

"Alright." John said, mildly confused, before returning to his plate. "Why, exactly?"

"You lack so much taste that you go with everything."

"That doesn't sound like a compliment."

"It's not. It's a statement of fact."

"Last I checked I was human, Sherlock, not a soy curd."

"I meant personality-wise."

"You said I lack taste?"

"Yes. And with the colour jumpers you wear, I'd say you rather look like a soy curd too."

John gave a sigh then resumed eating.

"I don't see how I'm supposed to take this."

"See, John?  _See_? The neutrality of your response negates your argument." Sherlock scooted closer out of the excitement of explanation. He liked the look in John's eyes as he  _got_  something, the moment he understood it. "You are so devoid of any defining characteristic that you can confine to anything you'd like, so long as it suits you. Therefore, you are tofu."

 _There_  was the look, the comprehensive sun dawning on John's face.

Instead of being offended, like most people, John smiled. Then again, John was not most people. He was special. He would always be special.

"Well if I'm tofu, you're squid." John said, picking an egg roll out of the box.

"Explain."

John chewed a moment, thinking.

"Not a lot of people like squid. They don't have the palate for it. It's slippery and you can never pin it down, so it kind of just slides around too much for you to bite into it. But once you actually get used to the texture, the taste is quite good."

Sherlock stared at him a moment before he grinned.

"Squid. I think that may be the nicest thing anyone's called me.  _Squid_." He repeated, tasting the word, his smile marginally broadening.

"I suppose it goes well with tofu then." John said, smiling back.

"They go together so well that one would ever want to eat anything again after they tried it. Pass me an egg roll."

Sherlock blinked, snapping back from that comfortable kitchen on Baker Street, to this airy, dark cathedral in Belgium, so far away from home. So far away from John.

Mikheia was walking back up to aisle to him and he stood.

"Did you have fun?" Sherlock asked bitingly, buttoning up his coat. "I trust the wafer and wine were as mediocre as anywhere else."

"You should not be so critical, sir. Maybe if you tried it once, you'd like it."

"Unlikely. I can't stomach cannibalism; eating the body and blood of a dead man. I'm more of a soy-based product fan myself. Much more humane."

Mikheia gave him an utterly confounded look, like Sherlock had just sprouted a horned second head.

"What is soy?"

* * *

Mary was waiting for him in his hotel room.

He was surprised, but knew he shouldn't be. She was always close by.

"Hello, John."

"What game are they trying to get me to play, Mary?" He asked, tossing his bag in a chair by the door and tearing off his cap.

John—"

"They told me to  _shoot_  Sherlock. They told me to  _murder_  my best friend who, by the way, until recently I thought was dead and buried-"

"So it's murder now, if you know the target personally?"

Her question caught him off-guard.

"The agency knew I would never,  _never_ , have completed this assignment, so I don't know what they're getting at—" John stopped. "But you do, don't you Mary? You knew he was alive. You...you knew, didn't you?"

She looked at him rather forlornly and he realised that she had been keeping a great and terrible secret from him.

"We have a lot to talk about John. A lot of things to tell you that we couldn't before. That I couldn't."

"Well, we've got time now. So I think you can start."

"You know what the penalty is for voluntarily letting a target get away."

"Yes."

"And you know that I couldn't stop them even though I want to?"

"Yes."

Mary hesitated, then began.


	10. eosophobia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Priest: For money? You murdered someone for money?
> 
> Ray: Yes, father. Not out of anger. Not out of nothing. For money.
> 
> Priest: Who did you murder for money, Raymond?
> 
> Ray: You, father.
> 
> Priest: I'm sorry?
> 
> Ray: I said you, father. What are you, deaf?"
> 
> Ciarán Hinds and Colin Farrell - "In Bruges"

His practise assignment had been difficult to say the least.

The agency had been impressed by his 'unofficial' work, that night full of raw anger and blood and mistakes that bruised later, and so they sent a recruiter to pick him up. Fleetingly, he thought that there was a distant woman inside that black car who would take him to Mycroft, but then he reminded himself that Sherlock was dead, so Mycroft had no business with him anymore.

Imagine his surprise when he got out of the car to find Mycroft Holmes himself waiting for him.

"A pleasure, John." Mycroft said with a pained smile that suggested this visit was anything but. John stared at him, flabbergasted. "Loquacious as always, I see."

"What are you doing here?"

"My job. As are you."

"You hired  _me_?" John laughed incredulously. "Unbelievable."

"No, I'm afraid I personally did not hire you." Mycroft said and John noted it with a grain of salt. "I'm afraid I can only waylay you from your real appointment for a brief amount of time." He tapped his umbrella on the ground. "No, I am here because your agency wanted me to assure you that if the situation gets out of control I can contain it easily, and faster than most."

"Because of your 'minor' government position?"

"No." Mycroft responded coolly. "Because I know you, John."

"You think I'll fail?"

"No, no, I think you'll pass with flying colours. I'm concerned with what happens afterwards."

"Don't tell me you actually care what happens to me now, Mycroft. I mean, Sherlock's—he's not here anymore. What could I possibly matter to you?"

"You matter a great deal to me, John, both sentimentally and pragmatically."

John couldn't have believed him less.

"Tell me the truth."

"You meant more to Sherlock that he would ever admit. I wish to thank you for your…companionship."

"And checking in on me from time to time to get something out of me is your idea of a thank you?"

"There are worse things. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Are you…threatening me?"

"Don't be silly, John. Why would I threaten someone who is on my side? Furthermore, threats are what thugs and ineffective mobsters use for immediate coercion. I am not a thug or ineffective."

"I thought you said you wouldn't protect me."

"I believe what I queried you was if you had come to me expecting protection. I never refused it, and I never will, unless you've gotten yourself into an awful mess. But you are smart, John. I trust you to make correct decisions."

"You trust me?"

"You warned me once, John, and that was enough. You didn't  _have_  to inform me of your…activities, but you felt it prudent that I know all the same. Your visit told me everything I needed to know. I know very well what you are capable of, and what you aren't. You're a soldier, a good one by both record and action, and I know that you will do the right thing."

"You know what I told the agency, then? You know that I'm not going after innocents. No political figures, either, if I can help it."

"Yes."

"I'll leave you alone." John said solemnly. "I won't bother you. Let me do my job so you can do yours."

"Oh, on the contrary, John, I think you'll be making my field quite extinct by the time you're done."

"Sorry."

"There's nothing to apologise for. Some of them deserve it." Mycroft produced a small folded piece of paper, thick and expensive, sealed with blue wax. After that first sighting, John would always know what it held. "Take care, John." Mycroft said tersely, a polite smile on his face, before John was ushered back into the car, the note, his  _first_  note, clutched in his hand.

* * *

It was an ambassador. Clearly the agency was testing how far his morals would stretch. But…it wasn't  _technically_ a politician. That was a start.

John had done his research. The ambassador's history was full of kickbacks, embezzlement, and backroom deals that stunk of corruption. The country he represented was in fair standing, economically and socially, and was only going up; he had a successfully corrupt future ahead of him.

John aimed. A man in a crisp suit, walking out of the hotel. Roughly about 100 yards away. He adjusted the scope one click right.

He disconnected. It was a game. It was just a game.

He fired.

One heartbeat passed.

The man's head exploded with blood and brain and skull fragment, splattering those around him, shocking them, but leaving them unharmed.

The ambassador looked around in wild confusion as he was ushered into a waiting car, alive and wholly undamaged.

He reconnected.

John's phone buzzed as he packed away his equipment.

_You chose wisely. The car is waiting one klick south. Welcome aboard._

The ambassador had not been the true target. The real target was his assistant, the true culprit of the crimes, all done in his name. John had had suspicions from the beginning, and he could tell forgery when he saw it.

John had been right.

The agency had tested him.

* * *

It had been their willingness to sacrifice an innocent man that bothered him the most afterwards. How badly did he need the money of an agency that saw in black and white, an agency that cared nothing for the worth of greyscale?

Then he had met Mary, his recruiter.

She'd been politely detached at first. They all had; cool, distant professionalism was like a second nature to them. After passing his first assignment, she had been in the car, waiting for him. After he reiterated his qualm list, she welcomed him. She smiled, she was patient with him, she was kind and good. John though that it had been an act to lull him into an unsuspecting security, like slipping into a warm bath until you didn't notice the temperature rising, but he quickly realised that was who Mary was. There were no lies in her eyes. It made her well-suited for her job, made her the perfect recruiter.

In the rush of adrenaline, he had blurted out, asking her if she'd like to go out sometime. She had laughed. He liked her laugh. She had accepted. He liked that too, although it had been on strictly platonic terms. They'd gone straight from the agency after he'd gotten a new set of clothes, to the Drop-Off, which they were to visit together in the next three years more than any other customers the owner could remember.

Their friendship was an easy one, a natural one, and it came to them quickly. Mary was easy-going, clever, friendly, and calm, and it felt like he had known her his whole life instead of a handful of hours. John had credited that night at the Drop-Off, high on adrenaline and caffeine, as the night that broke him out of the depressed fog he had been living in after Sherlock's fall. Mary had offered her hand to him and he had taken it, using her to lift him out of the sad state his life had been in. He would always remember that night, always remember her smile and laugh and voice just as it was when it was new to him. He would always be indebted to her for what she had done for him.

He wanted to remember her, as she was then, instead of how she was now, sitting in front of him looking utterly miserable.

He still trusted her, despite what she had told him. He still cared for her, despite what had happened to him in the Kremlin. None of that had been her fault. She wasn't responsible. It had been the agency, all the agency's doing, and she was going behind their backs to tell him. She was on his side. Innocent.

"Didn't you ask yourself why they weren't watching you in Novgorod? Why they used tranquilisers?"

The Golem's shadow stretched across his memory. The dried blood on his arms. The phantom pain in his shoulder.

"I had other things on my mind." He answered.

"We told them who you were, John."

"I always wondered why you were in that car after my first assignment." He looked at her. "Did they send you on purpose? Try to bait me in with a pretty woman that was as kind and patient as I needed?" He smirked. "It worked. Better than they know."

Mary looked to be on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry, John."

"You don't need to be."

Mary smiled sadly.

"Doesn't mean I'm not."

* * *

He had let her stay in his room, sleep in his bed. It was safer that way.  _She_  was safer that way, better off with him than without. The agency would know that she told him things he shouldn't have heard. They'd be looking for her.

John had popped down to the lobby for a moment to ask for the room service menu. A moment. Only a moment. But that was all they needed.

When he got back, the door wasn't shut all the way. He entered, a heaviness sinking inside him, confirming what he didn't want confirmed.

The menu fell from his hand as he raced to his bedroom, sending the door banging open as he stared into the empty room.

The rumpled sheets had fallen off the bed, kicked off as she had struggled. The pillow was still warm, still smelled of her, the scent light and unencumbered.

Mary was gone.

Gone, and it was all his fault.

All his fault.

John felt his head pound. The heaviness in his stomach twisted painfully. His throat tightened.

On his bed lay a note, folded, but unsealed. No blue wax.

He knew what it would say even before he opened it.

_The church. Midnight. I believe you have a job to finish. SH._

* * *

Sherlock stared silently as Mikheia talked animatedly with the Russian consulate. He shouldn't have been as surprised as he was that he didn't speak much English.

"Would you like to know what he's saying?" Mikheia asked, turning to the bored detective.

"Only if it's interesting."

"International espionage and murder?"

Sherlock sighed. "Continue."

"He said that a fellow ambassador's assistant was assassinated a few years ago for laundering money." Mikheia paused, listening, before continuing. "Serves them right, he said, because now they are all too scared to do it anymore."

"Who killed him?"

Mikheia asked the man, who paused before shrugging and answering.

"He said it was a local agency that deals with those types of things, but people are going crazy with rumours and saying it was the Golem. He disagrees."

Sherlock sat up straighter, interested.

"What makes him say that?"

"He says that when he last visited Russia he witnessed the Golem's funeral." Mikheia translated. "But only by accident. He says he does not like to glorify such kinds of things."

"He knows the Golem's real name?"

Mikheia asked and the man paused, thinking.

"Georgei Kurgazov." The man answered before adding something. Sherlock closed his eyes, memorising the name.

"He says Kurgazov visited Bruges often."

Sherlock's eyes snapped open.

"Repeat that. No, don't." He cut off Mikheia as he stood. "That would be pointless. I heard what you said."

Why would the Golem visit Bruges?  _Bruges_  of all the places in the whole world? What was so special? Did he have a favourite canal he liked to row on? Found a nice place to buy waffles, did he?

"He says that he thinks Kurgazov had business here."

"Obviously." Sherlock scoffed, already having come to that conclusion. "Every city has an underbelly if you care to turn it over. But he didn't have just business. He had a headquarters. Ask him if they have local records of Kurgazov's activities."

"Why?"

"Because we're going to go through them and find his address of operation."

"I do not think they will let us do that, sir."

"Tell them something that will allow us to, then."

Mikheia frowned then turned to the consulate, who answered amicably, with no signs of suspicion.

"What did you tell him?" Sherlock asked as they followed the consul from the room.

"I told him that we are CIA agents."

"No, really, what did you tell him?"

"I thought you would like the idea of being in the CIA, sir. People do not generally question American intelligence operations, do they?"

"You really told him that..." Sherlock realised quietly. This boy's audacity was quiet admirable. He lied so outlandishly that he must be believed.

Mikheia smiled.

"It worked, did it not?"

* * *

"Tell me." The voice said. It was dark, feral, dangerous.

"I already did!" The man gasped. "I don't know, I don't know what they are doing—"

"They won't be happy with what you've already told me, so you may as well continue. Now... _t_ _ell me_." The voice said more forcefully, followed by a cry of pain.

"Conditioning!" The man groaned. "It was conditioning."

"Why?"

Silence.

"To see how far they could push you. How far you'd go when you were unstable. If you would forget your morals."

"What are they planning next?"

"They're going to try to break you."

"Break me?" The voice barked in amusement. "They're going to have to find me first."

The voice leaned in close to his face. He could feel their breath, cold on his cheek.

"Tell them I'll be waiting." The voice hissed.

Something sliced through the man's bonds and they fell to the floor, clattering in the darkness.

The door slammed shut.

* * *

The church was quiet at the late hour, silence settling over like dust. It was cold, silent, pregnant and swollen with anxiety.

Mikheia paced behind Sherlock, scratching at his collar.

"Stop that."

"I cannot help it, sir."

"It'll be fine. Stop it."

"How is your stomach not full of monarchs?"

"It's 'stomach full of butterflies', but the idea of the Queen running around your digestive tract is far more amusing."

"At least you have a sense of humour tonight…" He trailed off, looking over at the woman, who was staring blankly ahead at the crucifix suspended on the wall above the altar, a makeshift gag tied around her mouth. He walked over and sat beside her, placing his gun on the far end of the bench so he wouldn't frighten her. "Are you alright?"

She nodded.

"Do you need anything? Water or the bathroom or something?"

She shook her head.

"Mikheia," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes, "She's a hostage, not a child."

"We took her against her will, sir. We owe her small comforts."

He turned back to her.

"Your friend will come for you and you can go home. We are not going to hurt you. You know this, yes?"

She nodded carefully. He liked the colour of her eyes, a light brown, like an almond pastry. He was rather hungry, not having much of an appetite at dinner after Sherlock had told him what they were to do that night.

"We have no qualm with you. We only want to talk to that man that you have been helping. He knows where the Golem is, see, or we think he might be—"

Mikheia stopped, freezing as a door behind them creaked open and slammed shut.

The church was as quiet as a freshly filled grave.

" _Golem_!" Sherlock shouted, his voice echoing through the silence. He raised his gun, easy enough to obtain, and even easier to steal. He'd have to thank Mikheia later for his suspension of good conscience. "Why don't you come out and face me and stop hiding in the shadows?"

A figure began to approach him through the darkness, their footsteps echoing on the tiles, but stopped.

"What, are you eosophobic now too?" Sherlock smirked, trying to goad him out into the open.

"You could say that."

The voice that answered him was not Slavic or Russian or even Eastern European. Sherlock could place it, certainly, right down to the neighbourhood, but he didn't want to.

When the Golem, the man that struck fear into the hearts of millions, the man known for his unmerciful, fearless brutality, stepped into the light, he was not the man that Sherlock had once met. He was not inhumanly tall, his limbs were not long and gangly and his face was hollow, yes, but with something other than tall cheekbones and sharp facial features, hollow with the heaviness of a burdensome life. This Golem was no myth. He was a man. He was a man that Sherlock knew well, a man he valued above all others, a man he loved.

As the Golem stepped into the light, Sherlock lowered his gun. His hands were shaking.

"John."

John Watson looked at him, his eyes blank.

John Watson raised his gun and fired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (In military terms)
> 
> A "klick" means a distance of 1000 meters.
> 
> A "click" determines how far you move the sight adjustments of the rifle according to the distance of the target per 100 yards. "One click" will change the point of impact one inch for a target 100 yards away.


	11. veins and vessels

Sherlock felt as he once did in that moment of freefall, that one moment when he tipped forward and sent himself falling off the roof of St. Bart's three years ago and he knew there was no going back afterwards. The moment he had ceded control to gravity, the moment he had given the reins to chaos and let himself fall.

Of course, he had still been in control of the situation then.

As John aimed his gun and fired at him, he decided that such was not the case now.

He felt the bullet burn past his cheek before embedding into the shoulder of the man behind him that Sherlock had not noticed until he felt blood his splattering on the back of his neck.

"Sherlock, _run_!" John yelled, waving his gun towards the door. Sherlock didn't like the look in his eyes, a calm determinant anchored in the deep blue. "You need to get Mary and get out of here before more of them come."

The first thing John has said to him in three years.

Three. Years.

Over one thousand days.

And he tells him to run.

Sherlock would have none of that.

"Mikheia," Sherlock strode over to the boy, picking up his discarded gun off the bench and handing it to him. "Take her and go."

Mikheia was silent for a moment, staring at the man who was writhing on the floor, blood smeared on the tiles underneath him.

"Where am I to go?" He asked.

"The hotel." John decided firmly. "Get back to the hotel."

"But what if they are waiting with more—"

"Just do it!" John snapped before heading over to Mary and untying her gag. "Mary, you know how to get back?"

"Yes." She answered hoarsely. "John, you'll be careful right? You know what you're dealing with?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll be fine. Watch your back, and make sure he keeps his gun out." John turned to Mikheia. "You'll be safe with her, and she'll be safe with you. If she gets hurt, it'll be on you, understand?"

Mikheia nodded. Mary stepped forward and hugged John before kissing him on the cheek and leading Mikheia out the doors and into the night.

For the first time in three years, Sherlock and John were alone together.

"You can still leave." John said quietly, his voice echoing in the hollow church. Shadows cast themselves across his face. He hadn't shaved in a few days, as apparent by the fine stubble.

"I have no intention of fleeing and leaving you defenceless."

"Sherlock," John's tone was heavy with warning. "Don't—"

"I will not leave you again, John." He said resolutely, striding over to his friend. "Tell me what's happening."

"The agency is coming after you for prying, Mary for talking, and me for listening." John said, scanning the shadows of the church, empty save for the groaning man on the ground. "I don't know who exactly they're planning to target, but by process of elimination it must be you."

"What is the agency?"

"The short version? A business of conscribed international hitmen."

"What do you have to do with them?"

"I work for them."

Sherlock whirled around to him. "You  _what_?"

John registered the clicking of cocking hammers for one split second before—

"Get down!" John yelled, tackling Sherlock to the ground and pushing him beneath a row of pews as bullets sprayed around them, tearing the tops of the benches and showering them with splinters and chunks of wood. Sherlock watched as John rolled onto his stomach, aimed, and concisely sent bullets into each leg he saw from under the benches, firing more as they collapsed and their heads appeared, the look of surprise frozen on their faces as bullets ripped through their brains.

Sherlock's mind whirred with calculations, ratios, the odds of each shot being as precise as they were—everything was moving too fast, he needed more time—

Then John was clutching at Sherlock's sleeve, trying to pull him up and away.

Sherlock could only stare at the bodies, at the thick blood oozing from their faces, pulpy with bits of brains and skull, red pooling beneath them.

"Sherlock, _come on_!"

He snapped out of his hazy shock, filing all the blood, those shattered fragments of skull, and that look in John's eyes, all away. Something to feel later. Was this what John did? How he coped?

John burst through the doors, Sherlock in tow, into an empty street. A car passed by, ignorant of the carnage the church had just suffered through. There was fresh blood smeared across the cobblestones at their feet. Someone was wounded, but they had gotten away. If it was Mikheia, Sherlock had a mind to go back into the church and take on whatever faced him, but John was pulling at his sleeve, clutching his hand, and dragging him back into the veins and vessels of Bruges. John was  _here_ , John was with him now, John was saving his life.

Birds scattered, flying against the night, as they began to run.

John darted into a side alley and then another and another, flowing through like he had them memorised, but further analysis proved he was running blindly, trying to rid them of whomever may have followed, before finally coming out into a small deserted canal and stopping. Sherlock slumped against the wall. His knees were weak. How odd.

"Are you alright?" John asked.

Was he alright? No. No, he was far from alright. John was suddenly back in his life, suddenly right there in front of him, acting like nothing had happened, like nothing had changed, but everything had changed,  _everything_ , and now it was him leading their adventure and not Sherlock. It was John in charge, John knowing what to do, John taking care of him now. It was John firing bullets into strangers like it was nothing.

"Sherlock, are you alright?" John repeated, concern filling his face. "We're almost to the hotel, only about a block away from the looks of it—"

It was all wrong. All wrong. John was supposed to be in London, in Baker Street, moving on with his life, not here, not in  _Bruges_ , not saving Sherlock. John was not supposed to be firing bullets into people's heads, he was supposed to be patching wounds and taking temperatures and doing anything but this.

Sherlock's heart awoke from its dormancy with a roar. It felt like it had been torn out and replaced with someone else's, with a new transplant that his body was rejecting. It sped on and on, faster, quicker, unstoppable, breaking free of the reins as it thundered onward, wild in newfound freedom.

"Sherlock—"

He felt his body tip over as he passed out.

That was unexpected.

* * *

When he woke, he found himself in that same modestly accommodating hotel room overlooking the Reie River that wove through Bruges like a swirling artery.

The same hotel room that he had stolen the woman from earlier. No, not stolen. Borrowed. She was just collateral. He was going to give her back. But here he was, in her bed. Or John's bed. Or both. No. Don't tread there. He didn't want to consider the possibility of them sharing one.

So many questions. So many. Three years of questions, in fact.

_Did someone force you into this, was it Mycroft, no, that's stupid…even he has limits, so that means you actually work for them, what's it like being the Golem, did you kill the one that attacked us in London, what happened to you, why, why, why, did you do this because of me, how many have there been, did you ever hear anything about me, are you alright you look so lost, did you miss me (I missed you), who are you after now, who were those men, why are they here, what have you gotten yourself into you silly doctor, John—my John— what have you done without me?_

John looked up at him as he left the bedroom.

He couldn't look back. Not yet.

Sherlock took in the vaulted wooden ceiling, the lone spherical light dangling from it, the plain white walls and plain, modest bed covered with a comfortable looking duvet. Things he could recognise from his earlier intrusion though they looked different in the light. All in all, in its quiet modernity and simple, refined taste, it was a significant leap up from where he and Mikheia were staying.

Speaking of, where was he?

Ah. Asleep on the sofa bed, curled away from the woman—Mary, was it? She was sleeping like they hadn't even kidnapped her. Must be a common occurrence—

He stopped, looking back to the boy. His arm was wrapped in bandages. Mikheia had been the one who was shot at the church, christening those stones with blood, although judging by the tract of cloth it had only grazed him. He had been lucky.

"There was someone waiting outside in the front, smoking a fag." John said, answering the unspoken question. "The people they sent were sloppy. They didn't expect us to fight back. He clipped Mikheia, but Mary got him in the throat."

"Remind me to thank her."

From the corner of his eye he saw a smile as it ghosted over John's face as he stood and began to make coffee since there wasn't tea to be had (he quietly claimed to have already looked high and low and Sherlock trusted him since if anyone was a bloodhound about tea it was John). The pot was already half-full, but he dumped it out and began again.

They sat at the little kitchenette table, Sherlock's long legs folded beneath his chair as the little cup of coffee steamed in front of him.

Apart from the stubble, John looked as he always did. His face, perhaps, had one or two lines more pronounced, a little deeper than they were before. His eyes were the same, Sherlock was happy to note, yet he thought it was too inadvisable and too illogical to ask John if he could examine them for something as trivial as kindness.

And now a gap of three years lay between them with no means of getting to the other side, no words to start stitching the wound with. So much to say and nowhere to start.

"So, how have you been?" John asked and a real smile cracked onto Sherlock's face, a rarity since he had been away, although when happiness had struck him, it usually pertained to John.

"One tends to remain in perpetual stress when they're chasing down the web of a criminal genius."

"Well, drink up then." John said, motioning to the untouched cup. "I was told by a nice employee at the front desk that the coffee was very good for stressful mornings."

Sherlock looked at him, allowing himself to notice everything he had skimmed over in the excitement and adrenaline of the morning.

_You've changed._

Sherlock could see it in John's eyes, see it in the lines forming around them (not visible yet; give it a few years), see it in the creases of his forehead and his posture and his slightly more reserved taste in clothing. He could see it in the fact that John failed to mention how this nice employee at the front desk had also offered him her number and he had kindly refused, which was both like and unlike John. Did this woman—this  _Mary_ —have something to do with it? Or was it something else?

The fact that John was the Golem did not surprise him, once he had acclimated himself to the shock of it.

John knew how to blend into a crowd, and now he was acknowledging it, putting it to good use. When put along with his military skills, he was the perfect candidate. John was always a golem in his own right, but now he was  _the_  Golem. He was tofu that had found its true calling.

Sherlock wondered if John still remembered that conversation or if it was a distant memory, stored away in the cupboard and gathering dust. He was surprised John remembered anything about him at all, considering that he had the option to cleanse Sherlock out of his system like he was poison, an option that Sherlock had expected he would take.

But John was a soldier. He was brave. He let himself feel pain instead of denying it, and he was stronger for it. John was a marvel, the rarest of the rare, and Sherlock loved him for it. There was no use denying it, since that would only delay his suspicions until the moment he confirmed them, which had been a long time coming.

He loved John Watson. Loved him for his flaws, for his low-reflex intelligence, for his boring ideas of Saturday nights, for the way he left his socks lying about  _all_  the time (even after chastisement from Sherlock). Loved him for his good qualities, for his ability as a conductor, for his calmness and patience, for his boring ideas of Saturday nights, for the way he left his socks lying about, for his bravery, for his loyalty, for  _everything_  that made John  _John_.

"We can't stay here for long." John said, breaking a brief silence. "The agency knows where I am. I'm surprised they've let us stay this long."

Sherlock blinked.

"They're probably a bit preoccupied with cleaning up the bodies." Sherlock said calmly. Did it bother him that John had put them there? He'd have to think about it.

"I didn't want you to see me that way." John admitted quietly, running a hand through already mused hair.

"You saved my life."

"Doesn't change what happened." John said, smiling bitterly. "Doesn't change the fact that you saw me shoot four people in the head."

"It was three, actually." Sherlock corrected. "You hit the first one in his shoulder."

"Well I meant to get him in the head, then. Do good intentions count?" John asked with an unhappy grin.

"Something else is bothering you. Tell me."

John sighed.

"You can't do that anymore, Sherlock." He looked up at him with tired eyes. "You can't just force me to tell you everything. You can't just—just  _come back_  like nothing's changed."

"Has it?"

John laughed rather maniacally.

"I kill people for money! Wouldn't you call that a change?"

"Perhaps. But tonight was different, wasn't it?"

"I told them—the agency—I told them I wouldn't go after innocents. Those men tonight…I hadn't been assigned to them. I had to have proof that they were guilty of whatever they had done, and I didn't even think before I shot them. I didn't know who they were—"

"They were aiming to kill. You had to adapt to a new circumstances and you did marvellously well under pressure." Sherlock leaned forward, trying to get John to look at him. "I don't blame you, John, for acting as you did. If you hadn't, we'd all be dead and they would have carted you off somewhere and done god-knows-what to you."

John looked up at him, the light catching in his face.

"You think they would've let me live?" He asked, amused.

"I would assume so. From what I gather, you're very valuable to them. And you're the Golem. As I understand it, you're the  _only_  one. You're a rare commodity."

John stared at the table, his smile fading.

"Funny story, that."

"Is it one you want me to hear?"

"Maybe one day, once I've wrapped my head around it all first."

Sherlock nodded. "I understand."

"I'd explain to you what state of mind I'm in right now, but I think you've already deduced that, haven't you?" John asked, rubbing at his eyes, before looking at Sherlock and gesturing. "Well, go on then."

"The coffee was already made. You've been up a while, all night perhaps, but you've changed clothes, which implied that you felt dirty. You may have also taken a shower, but that's doubtful as I didn't hear water running and you always let your hair dry naturally and it's not wet now. You're expecting an attack, which is another reason why you haven't showered, since you thought you didn't have time. You're tired, but not just from lack of sleep. You're worried for our safety since you feel responsible for getting us into this, even though I am at as much fault, if not more than you. You feel guilty over those men's deaths, even though you shouldn't. You know your agency is dangerous, but you've been ignoring the fact until now, because they've never threatened you and now they've crossed a line. You're wondering where your loyalties lie. And, judging by your posture, you have to go to the bathroom, so by all means…" Sherlock trailed off, gesturing to the bathroom.

John stared at him, a weak smile coming onto his face before he stood.

"I'll never get tired of that."


	12. standing asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges."
> 
> Colin Farrell - In Bruges

John stood, leaning against the window, feeling dead on his feet as he watched the morning blooming before him, pink and blue and bright as it burned away the night. He stared at the horizon, jagged with sleepy-eyed rooftops and the bad breath of smoking chimneys as Bruges began to wake itself up from thick slumber.

"Right." He turned to the room, to Sherlock sitting at the kitchen table, to Mary sitting on the chair beside him putting new bandages on Mikheia, who had just woken up and with heavy eyes and flyaway hair. "We've got to get you out of here. Tonight."

"Unacceptable." Sherlock said calmly. "I'm not leaving you again. The only way you're carting me out of here is if I'm a corpse."

"See, I've already done that, Sherlock." John said quietly. "I can't do it a second time."

Sherlock paused a moment.

"Where will you go?"

"I'll stay here with Mary until things blow over. We weren't the ones they were trying to kill this morning. Is there somewhere nearby that you can go to? Somewhere safe?"

"Mycroft has a summer home in Leipzig, but he never goes to it because the housemaid always pushes strudel on him. Last time he went he had to endure months of my taunting him until he shed the weight again. That's the closest accommodation that I can think of. My and Mycroft's enmity is well known. No one will look for me there because I won't be expected to go."

"There's a train bound for Leipzig leaving at 8." Mary said, scrolling through her phone before rolling her neck.

"Mary, you can take a shower if you want to. God knows you deserve it. It's safe now."

She paused, considering, before nodding and excusing herself. Soon the sound of running water flowed through the suite.

John turned to Sherlock, his face shaded with earnest seriousness. "Sherlock, you have to promise me that you will get on that train."

"I will make sure he does, sir." Mikheia said, scratching at his arm.

"Can you travel with that injury?"

"Injury?" Mikheia said, confused, looking at his collar before looking down. "Oh, that. I have travelled with far worse ones in my life."

"Will you ever tell me how you got that?" Sherlock asked, staring at the spider scar crawling along Mikheia's collarbone.

"Perhaps one day, sir."

"You could tell John." Sherlock said, turning to his friend. "Both your wounds are similar, almost identical."

John looked at him blankly, darkly.

"I don't think he wants to Sherlock—"

"You were shot?" Mikheia asked, his brow furrowing.

"In Afghanistan, yes."

"You are a man in uniform?" Mikheia said, an excited glint in his eyes as he sat down opposite John. John stilled for a moment, surprised by the interest but more than a little flattered. It didn't happen as often as he'd liked.

"I was," He nodded, "But I got invalided home after the wound. You can't really shoot with a bad arm."

"What was it like? War?"

John sighed heavily, ruffling his hair before sitting down.

"I never understood how some people don't really get what war is when they experience every day. People are at war all the time. It can be over a parking space or a job or a piece of mountain or valley that has no net value apart from the fact that it's yours and not  _theirs_." He paused. "I guess, to put it as simply as I can, war, or at least the war I was in, was brutal and dry and foreign and, on some level, I suppose I'm happy that I was shot. But I think you'll agree with me that there's nothing fun about the actual process—"

"Oh, I was not shot, sir."

"You weren't?"

"No. I—" Mikheia rubbed the back of his head nervously. "It is not something I am proud of and therefore I try not to talk about it so that I may enjoy a clean and squeaky reputation, but before I became a translator, I was involved in some not so honest business. When I was younger I worked as a drug runner, but as I got older I usually stuck to robbing tourists since it seemed to be something that I was particularly good at."

"Glad I picked you, then." Sherlock said with a smirk. Mikheia offered a grudging, half-amused smile.

"When I was 17, I tried to cheat a man that was older and wiser than I was. I was not the smart kid that I am today, see. He—he had me taken to an old cigarette factory and I was beaten very badly. I was still useful so they did not want to kill me, but the man, he got red eyed, thirsty for blood, and, to teach me a lesson, he took a red hot poker out of a fire, and—and he—" Mikheia stopped, unable to continue. He ran a hand through his hair and then held both hands out, clenched into fists, and mimicked something being shoved through his chest.

"How did you survive?" Sherlock asked, breaking the shocked silence. "For the poker to be red hot, it would have to have a sustained temperature of 500 to 1000 degrees Celsius. Any full-thickness, third degree burns would have pierced your heart and killed you."

"He did not stab me all the way through." Mikheia said quietly. "He could not get past my collarbone. He was not strong enough." He shivered at the memory, shoulders jumping as if being pushed back. His hand flew up to steady it, rubbing at the darkened skin. "Sometimes at night I can still feel it burning through my skin like I was made of wax, I can feel it melting through my chest."

"I know how it feels." John said sympathetically. "It's just as it was when it first happened, isn't it? It feels just as real, even when you know it's not. Even when you're awake. But you feel the pain and you wish you weren't awake, you wish you were somewhere else..."

Mikheia nodded, unable to speak. John let him regain his thoughts.

"The man's boss made him pay my hospital bills for what he had done, for the excesses he had gone to. He was a prideful man, and he had to pay for it."

"Was?"

Mikheia stopped, his eyes widening at the gaffe as he opened his mouth to speak before closing it.

"What did you do to him, Mikheia?" John asked quietly.

Mikheia drummed his fingers on the table nervously, making up his mind, apparently in their favour.

"I went to his home in the middle of the night and I shot him in the head." He answered calmly. "I didn't want him to suffer, but he didn't deserve to live. Not after what he did to me. Not after what he did to others around us. I shot him, but I missed and blew off one of his ears and woke him. He…was very  _not_  happy after that. I shot him again, and hit him above his left eye. I had to stare at him as he died—"

He swallowed, cutting himself off, unable to continue.

"You did it for the right reasons." John said quietly but Mikheia didn't look at him. "I know that there's nothing to say to make you feel better about it, but you were right in doing what you did. It sounded like he wouldn't have learned, wouldn't have stopped what he was doing. If I had been where you are, I would have done the same."

"Wronging someone who has wronged me…it is not a very admirable action."

"But neither is sending a red-hot poker through your chest."

"I did not have to kill him. It was not necessary."

"Yes you did." Sherlock said, speaking finally. Mikheia and John looked to him. "And you should listen to what I am about to say because I will once say this once for however long we may know each other. You are a good man, Mikheia. You did Darwin a great service when you weeded that primeval lout from the garden."

"You should be so lucky." John said, breaking the silence. "Coming from Sherlock, that's a compliment."

* * *

Sherlock always hated train-station chatter.

Man calling significant other, he'll be late for dinner (read: making room for affair). Woman calling her son (read: trying to keep her mind off her other child, whom she never rings). Woman with child, going to see a dying relative. Man and woman, in love (read: sickening), first trip apart.

Man with blue eyes waiting (read: alone), man with blue eyes walking towards him (read: regretful), John handing him his bag.

"This won't be forever." John said quietly.

"I know that." Sherlock scoffed, looking anywhere but him.

"Do you?"

His eyes met Sherlock's.

"Yes."

John smiled sadly.

"I won't run from you if you won't."

Sherlock suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

"Don't be absurd, John, I can't run from myself."

"I meant from me." John said softly.

_Oh._

Sherlock blinked.

When would John  _learn_?

"I never ran  _from_  you, John, I ran  _for_  you, and I highly anticipate the day when you realise that."

"I have realised that, Sherlock."

"No you haven't. You're still upset with me."

John stared at him incredulously.

"Are you  _really_  bringing this up now—?"

"No, John, I know that this is not the opportune time or place. I am simply stating fact. You are still angry with me for leaving you."

"But, see, you didn't just  _leave_ , Sherlock!"

Man, yelling (read: hurting, in the only way he knows how to hurt). Man stares at angry partner, silent (read: apologetic and quite inexperienced at it).

"This is how you wanted this parting moment to be?" Sherlock asked finally.

"You weren't giving me other options, Sherlock. You were being an instigator–"

"I was prohibiting further agitation—"

"You were being an instigator!" John said firmly and Sherlock had the good sense not to argue. "Sherlock," His voice was calmer now, more in control. "I know this isn't the most optimistic thing I've ever said, but I don't want this to be the last thing we remember of each other if—if something happens." He paused, voice growing even softer. "For three years, the last thing I had to remember you by was a vague phone call and watching you throw yourself off a building. I don't want that to happen again. It can't happen again."

"What would you like me to say?"

John shut his eyes.

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"You're asking me to put words into your mouth because you don't know what to say."

"I'm merely trying to appease you, John. Tell me if I'm not doing so—"

"Dammit, Sherlock!" John sighed, running a hand through his hair. Mary and Mikheia appeared out of the crowd, "Just…just stay out of trouble, yeah?"

"I will do my best."

"Good."

"John, if any misfortune were to happen you—"

"I'll be fine, Sherlock. I'd be more worried about yourself if I was you."

"Be that as it may," Sherlock said with a slight grin. "It is not my well-being that I care most for. And you're willingly choosing to stay in Bruges, I can't even imagine your suffering, it's like purgatory-"

"Maybe I deserve it."

Sherlock stared at him a moment, chewing his words.

"You're too good for purgatory." Sherlock said plainly. "The Devil would be so lucky to have you."

"Hello boys," Mary smiled. "Your tickets out." She said, handing one to Mikheia. "Once you arrive in Leipzig I've asked my sister to pick you up. You can trust her. Just to be sure, ask her what flavour ice cream I like best. The answer's Neapolitan."

"Unwise." Sherlock scoffed. "Many people's favourite ice cream flavours are Neapolitan. I need something more substantial."

"Well I can't give you bank codes if that's what you're asking." Mary said with a smile before pausing. "Tell her: 10-15-8-14. She'll know what it means."

Sherlock stared at her a moment and she stared back.

"Very well."

Mary held out his ticket and he took it.

"Have a safe trip, Mr. Holmes."

* * *

Mary managed to find a small, quiet corner in a station café to pull the boy into while giving John and Sherlock their goodbye.

"You are certain Mr. Holmes and Mr. John will not miss us?" Mikheia asked, sitting down across from her.

"I think they have more important things to discuss, love."

"What is it that you wish to discuss?"

She lit a cigarette.

"How has Sherlock been?"

Mikheia's brow knitted.

"What do you mean?"

She took a long drag before answering.

"How has he acted around you lately?"

"He has been…very quiet, most of the time, but that is his nature, yes? Other than his nature, he has been distant and…morose I think is the correct word. He—" Mikheia paused, scratching at his collar. "He often gets a certain face when he thinks of someone. I once thought it was platonic. I do not think so now. And, since I know that Mr. Holmes has only cared to have one true friend in this world, I know who that someone is."

"I think we both do." Mary said, gently exhaling smoke.

 _That smell_.

"If I may query," Mikheia said, swallowing harshly. "Where did you pick up those cigarettes?"

"In the station at Novgorod." Mary answered, concern passing over her face. "Is there something wrong?"

"I—" Mikheia shut his eyes. Sickeningly sweet smoke. Heat. Sweat. Heavy cologne. "Would you mind…extinguishing it, please?"

"Of course." Mary said, stubbing it out in the ashtray.

Mikheia took a deep, shaky breath. "Thank you."

Ice water. Soft sheets. Clean linen. Almond pastry eyes.

His breath evened.

"What—" He cleared his throat. "What will happen to you?"

"Me? I expect John and I will get a slap on the wrist or a time-out. Members of the agency have done far worse things."

"Treachery is a common occurrence?"

"Not as much as kidnapping." Mary said with a grin.

"I am very truly sorry for that. It was not my intention to steal you."

"Just a mad thought in the mad mind of Sherlock Holmes." Mary sighed. "Ah, well, no harm done." She eyed his bandage. "Not to me, anyways. How is it today?"

Mikheia looked down, examining his arm. "Better…I was careful not to sleep on it."

"You think it's treachery, what we did?"

"In terms of black and white, you betrayed an ally. That is treachery. In colourful terms, this treachery also saved me my life and Mr. Holmes' as well. I owe you a rather large debt."

"Think nothing of it, love." She looked at her watch. "I think it's about time to interrupt them, don't you?"

Mikheia smiled.

"I think it is perfect."


	13. the paper pawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Do not stand at my grave and cry,
> 
> I am not there; I did not die."
> 
> \- Mary Frye

Sherlock was pacing.

Mycroft's home was certainly nice enough, but it was the emptiness of it that got to him. It was the lack of John, the non-Johness of it all that sent his head loose with wild ideas and theories that only suited facts to theories and not theories to facts.

"Will you please stop with that?" Mikheia asked, pausing in his mundane tuning of an old guitar he had found in the attic.

"I can't help it."

"It'll be fine, sir. Please stop it."

"He was supposed to get here two hours and thirteen minutes ago."

"Trains are late, sir. People are late. There are many things that could have waylaid him."

John, bloodied and bruised. John, screaming in pain. John, hopeless. John, destroyed.

"Many  _not_ violent things." Mikheia added, seeing the look on his face.

Sherlock shook his head. Speculation would only agitate him. Was this how John felt every day? Bound in worry, in flexing paralysis, that he might never see Sherlock walk through that door?

For one terrifying moment, for one second of horrifying doubt, Sherlock considered that John may be doing this to get back at him, that he was waiting outside the door until Sherlock was absolutely frantic and then he would come in and Sherlock would finally understand the numbing pain he had felt all these years. But that was not who John was. John would not let him burn if he could douse the fire. As much as John had worried over Sherlock, it was not in his nature to be intentionally cruel and spiteful.

Not that Sherlock had been entirely unfeeling towards their separation. As he said goodbye to John on that cold roof on that cold day, some hard flint had scraped inside him, caching a spark to tinder. His heart had begun to smoulder and, for over a thousand days, he burned, each day's flame licking at him a little hotter than the last. For a thousand days he poured over every detail, everything he remembered of John, dedicating each day to one special thing. The first week had consisted of the sound of his voice, the smell of his aftershave (Sherlock had considered anonymously sending some for his birthday then thought better of it), the slow clicking as he typed at a keyboard. Nothing had escaped his notice. Nothing had escaped his catalogue, filing John neatly into his own schemata, his own little box inside Sherlock's mind that the memories of him could call home. Sherlock would think of the curve of John's ear, the tilt of his smile, the sound of his laugh, every cowlick he'd ever had, every annoyed sigh, every smile, every tick, every flaw, every attribute,  _everything_. And then, once he reached the end of his list, he would start over again.

But Sherlock had not taken into account that John would change. That John would not be the same man he knocked down that day, that John would rebuild himself using different materials, using the ones he could salvage from the wreck, and build a better foundation, a better machine, a better man. He had thought that John would remain a constant. He had foolishly assumed that John would just wait there for him for three years and welcome him back with open arms and a smile and a cup of tea.

He had not expected this; that John would turn himself into the Golem, that he would wring the arms of his morals until they were red and raw. But then again, he was not surprised. John was John. He had been a soldier before he met Sherlock, and so he would be after Sherlock left. The soldier mentality had been his saving grace. It had preserved him after he was shot, it had helped him cope, and so it was only rational that he turn to it in other times of mental or emotional crisis. He had just turned to it so much that he had his back to everything else.

The blankness in his eyes as he fired had been what shook Sherlock the most. It was detached from everything, centring in on one goal, one pulse in the chord, so everything else faded away like white noise. John firing those bullets, John being the cause of those men's deaths, none of that bothered him more than the thought that John had killed before in his army tour did. Those men were trying to kill him, John acted, and John saved his life. That was all he had to consider.

Something about this meeting bothered him. John was supposed to arrive two hours ago. Something had gone wrong. Something had happened. Mikheia said trains and people could be late, and that was all very well and true, but–

"John wouldn't take a train." Sherlock said, breaking a moment of a few second's silence.

Mikheia strummed on his guitar absentmindedly for a moment, thinking, before looking up.

"He would not? Why? It is cheap, fast, relatively safe—"

"Whomever he works for would know they put us on a train. They would keep tabs on it in case he tried to leave." Sherlock sat with an irritated noise. "I never should have left. I should've stayed—"

"And what good would that do, sir?" Mikheia asked. "There are no mysteries in Bruges for you to solve whose answer was not already obvious."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there was only the mystery of the Golem, but we know his identity now. That is who you were tracking, yes?"

"One of the people, yes. I thought he would have information that I could use."

"You were going to coerce him?"

"Or bribe, or threaten. I would have gotten what I wanted out of him."

"And what now?"

"Now? Now, I'll still get the information from him."

"John is not a tablecloth pawn to you. He is not someone that you would use then toss away. How are you going to get the information you require out of him?"

"Well, it will be difficult since he's still upset with me—"

"You have not seen him in three years and already you have managed to make him angry in less than 24 hours?" Mikheia asked, eyebrows raised. "That is a personal best?"

"No, my personal best is one hour and five minutes. Once after a trip to Scotland I came back, refused him lunch and then insulted his latest girlfriend."

"His latest girlfriend? You mean—"

"We are not a couple." Sherlock admitted.

"But you love him?"

"I care for him, yes."

"Alright, you love him." Mikheia stated again. "And he loves you?"

"Once his anger abates, I assume he will resume his affections, yes."

"So, what is stopping you?"

"I threw myself off a building to spare his life and subsequently destroyed him."

"Destroyed him?" Mikheia asked, confused. "Did you...land on him or something?"

"No, I destroyed him emotionally. I was—and perhaps still am—his closest friend, as he is mine. Imagine if you saw the person you were closest to in this world, the person who has seen you at your weakest as well as your best, and then they toss themselves off the roof of a very high building. How would you feel?"

"I would feel curious, sir."

"Curious?"

"Yes. I would want to know why."

_"The newspapers were right all along…tell anyone who will listen to you...that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."_

"And if you can't?"

"Then I will bury them and move on."

"What if there was no body?"

"I would still bury them. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't stop looking for one."

Mikheia…you beautiful electrical circuit.

Of course.  _Of course_. This explained the biggest question of all. Sherlock was traversing the globe and so John followed, trying to find him, trying to find any kind of body that he could bury, but the grave was left open and empty, and John had nothing to fill it with. So he split from himself, sending one half to go lay down in the empty grave and wait while the other went out and filled more, filled the graves of those who deserved it—

The doorbell rang, one elongated buzz, one high pitched ring as someone held the button down as long as they could.

Sherlock leapt out of his seat, on his feet and walking towards the foyer before Mikheia could even put his guitar down.

Something slumped against the door from the other side. Something was wrong.

"John?"

He reached for the doorknob, turning it.

The door opened.

John, bloodied and bruised, as he had imagined.

_Wrong wrong wrong—_

John fell over the threshold, half-conscious and fading, his face nearly indiscernible under all the blood.

"John. John.  _John_ —"

Sherlock rushed around him, trying to hoist him up from under his arms. John screamed and Sherlock set him down. His hands were bloody.

John, screaming in pain as he imagined.

"Mikheia!" Sherlock yelled, and the boy rushed in. "Help me move him. Careful of his arms. I don't know where the blood is coming from—"

"Sh—" John choked, his eyes cracked open, but barely. "Sherlock, I—"

"John, stop talking." Sherlock said tersely as he and Mikheia gently but quickly carried him to an empty bedroom down the hall.

"B—but I—"

"John—"

John let his eyes shut.

John hopeless, as he had imagined.

"John, don't you dare!" Sherlock yelled, propping him on the floor against the bed, his head rolling back onto the duvet. Blood was already pooling into the carpet. "I'm the only one who's allowed to leave, John! Do you hear me?"

Sherlock felt his throat welling, pressing in with an unnamed heaviness. His heart hurt, every pulse sending a too-hot electricity thrumming through his blood.

"Mikheia, I need hot, wet towels." He turned to where the boy stood, shocked into stillness and his voice turned viciously sharp. "What are you doing standing there with your mouth open? Go!  _DO IT NOW_!"

The boy startled and sprinted from the room. That was the first time he had seen the detective yell. He was always so composed, so in control, so sane, but now he seemed quite  _in_ sane. His eyes were wild, and the thought of never seeing them again drove Mikheia from the room.

Sherlock turned back to John, whose chest was rising and falling erratically, like it was being scraped against a jagged rock wall.

" _John_! Don't you dare let yourself…leave! Don't go, don't go, don't go—you  _can't—_ Electrical circuits don't work without conductors, you idiot—"

John said nothing. Blood trickled down from a cut above his face into his mouth as he gasped like a fish out of water. There were tears on his face, mingling with all the red. Diluting it.

Sherlock ripped John's shirt off, sending it the floor with a wet squelch, exposing a chest coated in fresh blood that flowed over wounds and around congealed, sticky globs of previously shed blood that hadn't been cleaned off. Mikheia ran in, the bowl in his hands steaming in the dark room. The blood soaking into the floor shone black in the golden light coming in from the hallway.

"You said Bruges was safe!" Sherlock yelled frantically, as if it would make John talk to him. Good. If he was angry, he wouldn't leave. The stubborn arsehole would want the last word. "You said they weren't gunning for you there! You said you'd be alright!"

Sherlock snatched the bowl from Mikheia's shaking hands and grabbed a handful of towels, mindless of the stinging temperature, and hurriedly attacked John's skin, slopping water on the floor. He hoped the feeling of heat on open wounds would be enough to snap him awake.

He was only half right.

"M—M— _Mary_ —" John sputtered out, groaning and hissing as the blood was wiped away. "She—"

"Is she responsible?"

No answer. More watery blood dripped away from him, onto the carpet. Mycroft wouldn't be happy about the damage, but that was another matter.

"John, did she do this to you?"

He could see the wounds now, sprawling across John's skin. So many, too many to count, small but deep, meant to hurt. They were...infinite.

Sherlock felt as if someone had grabbed his stomach in their fist and squeezed, forcing all the blood from him. He wanted to hurt something.

John had been tortured.

" _John_." Sherlock grabbed his face with his free hand, squeezing until John's eyes cracked open again.

"This goodbye is…is closer than the last one, isn't it Sh—Sherlock?" John said, a slow smile on his face. "At least we're not s—seven stories apart…"

All the breath forced itself from Sherlock's lungs and he struggled to talk, to rationalise, make sense of everything that was happenening. Mycroft must have medical supplies _somewhere_ in this godforsaken mansion—

"John, shut up. You talk like that again and—John?  _John_ —"

John didn't respond.

John destroyed, as he had imagined.

Mikheia stood in the doorway as the great Sherlock Holmes ran a bloodied hand through his hair.

He decided that he would never again speak of the tears dripping down the detective's face.


	14. a history of inaccuracies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "OTHERS because you did not keep
> 
> That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
> 
> Yet always when I look death in the face,
> 
> When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
> 
> Or when I grow excited with wine,
> 
> Suddenly I meet your face."
> 
> \- "The Deep-Sworn Vow" - W.B. Yeats

Mikheia was pacing.

He understood what Sherlock had said earlier, about not being able to stop. It gave him something to do other than worry for the two men behind that closed door. Both of their health was at stake now. John may be the one that was injured, but Sherlock was the one that hurt with those deep wounds that medical care couldn't heal.

Mikheia had started a fire, if only out of habit. Watching the flames crackle that great, ornate marble fireplace reminded him of the days when the electricity bills couldn't be paid and his mother dragged out an old metal trashcan and set to work warming her children. He had worked harder, dishonestly and honestly, so he would never hear her scrape that tin over the floor again.

Sherlock had emerged from the room an hour ago, his eyes gravid with exhaustion and heavy from something other than sleep. He hadn't yet taken a shower, his shirt stained with the same blood that formed a sticky paste in his hair.

"How is he doing?"

No answer, which was a most expected silence from the silent man.

Sherlock's gaze remained fixed on the fire. "Isn't it a bit too hot for that?"

His voice wasn't right. Too quiet and hoarse.

"Depends on who you ask, sir." Mikheia said, his eyes following the detective before settling on the small bottle he had clenched in his hand. "Mind telling me what you have been consuming?"

Sherlock scoffed and didn't answer as he threw himself into the nearest chair. Mikheia set down the guitar gently. His uncle had been like this, turning to the bottle when he didn't know how to handle a situation properly.

"You are as drunk as a foul-smelling badger."

"The phrase is 'drunk as a skunk', and I'll thank you not to compare me to either mammal again."

"That will not help John, sir. You should try and talk to him."

"I don't talk to unconscious beings." Sherlock sneered, an ugly blemish on his face. "They're not sentient. It would be pointless."

"I do not think so."

"And what do I care for what you think?" Sherlock snapped.

"Did you know that you are not always right, Sherlock?" Mikheia asked and Sherlock paused. Mikheia had never called him by his name, always 'sir' or 'Mr. Holmes', always something formal, never this personal. Something had changed now.

"I have a history of inaccuracies, like any other man."

"But we both know that you are not any other man." Mikheia paused. Sherlock would never ask where he had gone wrong, but his dormant curiosity was piqued, the monster raising its head drearily. Mikheia wanted nothing more than to kick it awake, kick it out of its depressed lethargy until it was biting and snarling instead of wallowing and whining and pawing for reassurance of an abstract future of the man in the other room.

"You were wrong about me, at least when we first met. I was five when my father died," Mikheia began quietly. He was not cowed or embarrassed or hurt. He said it as fact, because it deserved to be acknowledged and recognised, not shoved in the dark like something to be ashamed of. "Which would make me 24, not 19. I thought if I told you a younger age you might be more inclined to take pity on me and perhaps tip me a bit more. Once I realised I was wrong we were already on the way to Bruges and I chose to stay with you for other reasons that did not involve pity or money. But that is another story, for another time."

Mikheia inhaled quietly through his nose, a steadying breath.

"Once, when I was a boy, I found myself alone walking through Ulica Zmaja od Bosne; the Alley of Snipers, as you called it. I do not know why I went there and I am not sure I ever will. My father had just died. Maybe I wanted to know why. Later on, I realised there was no reason. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he was shot. I was only five, and already I knew well the unfairness of the world. I learned early, and it saved me from any later disappointment-"

In a quick blur, Sherlock reached a pale arm out and snatched the guitar, tossing against the wall. It crashed with a rough and unnatural twang of snapping strings and splintering wood.

"Of course it's not  _fair_!" Sherlock shouted. "What a stupid thing to say! Everyone knows nothing is fair! Nothing! Not tossing myself off a building, not faking my death, not John becoming whatever the hell he is, not John getting wounded, not your stupid tuning of that stupid guitars' stupid A string that makes a poor excuse for a stupid E Chord, nothing! None of it is  _fair_! I never asked for any of it, but you know what? It seemed like I did! Nothing went the way I had planned because life is so  _bloody unfair_  as you so simply put it!"

Mikheia said nothing, letting the raging detective rid himself of the steam that had been building up inside him for three years.

"And you know what's worse? I knew what this would do to him! I knew, and I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him, and now he might never know, he might never forgive me. I wouldn't forgive me if I were him, but he's John-he's  _John_ -he's everything, he's the reason I left and the reason I would come back, and he'll never forgive me for what I did...never..."

Sherlock trailed off, the pressure gauges lowering back down.

When Mikheia broke the silence, his voice was gentle, quiet. "We are in the same barge, you and I."

"The phrase is we are in the same  _boat_." Sherlock said calmly, all his anger having been channelled through his destruction of the instrument. Mikheia continued.

"I know that you do not think much good of anything. I know that many things disappoint you and so you have made yourself disappointed by everything. But while I was in the Alley, I came across a dog. It had been shot in the leg, and it was bleeding out. I tried to help it, and it bit at me. It didn't know any better than to protect itself the only way it could. I took off one of my socks, the only pair of socks that I had in the whole world, and I wrapped it around the wound. I took the dog home and gave it to a neighbor and even though it is quite old, it is still alive and well today. I think I was spared that day in the Alley, I think that someone saw my good deed and saved me my life. Or maybe it was because I was a child, although you reminded me once that they had a habit of not even sparing children. I don't know what it was, but I am grateful that they let a hurt boy take a hurt dog home."

Mikheia stood, taking his empty tea cup and prying the bottle from Sherlock's hand. The detective didn't stop him, but let it be taken from his palm.

"I saved him his life even if he did not want me to, and I will do the same for you, no matter how much you bite. Talk to him. He will hear you."

That had been an hour ago, one whole hour since Sherlock had disappeared back into that quiet, dark room. Mikheia had made sure there were no bottles with him.

Mikheia considered trying to fix the guitar, but it would be quite pointless. It was beyond repair. He had nothing to do but wait. Wait and pace. He could have a look at the other Mr. Holmes' library. That might be interesting...

Mikheia took one last look at the closed door then set off into unknown territory.

* * *

Behind the door was a very silent, very still, very agitated Sherlock.

He had perched himself on a chair beside the bed, keeping a vigilant eye over John like a grotesque peering down from Notre Dame. He had been restless at first, before his body had processed the alcohol, but now he felt relatively calmer, his furious screaming and subsequent crash taking his agitation from him. John wouldn't have approved of the way that he had yelled at Mikheia. Mikheia, who had done nothing to provoke him. Mikheia, who was so wise for being 24 and pretending to be 19. Mikheia, who had taken his tantrum just as calmly as John would have.

Sherlock let his eyes open slowly, hoping for a change and finding none.

John's face was pale and tired. A sheen of cold sweat had broken out over his skin sometime in the night, plastering his hair to his forehead and covering his still face.

Sherlock had categorically detailed every cut, every scrape, every bruise, every wound, and memorised it, noted the way that each split John's skin like a small, dry riverbed. He had kept his mind occupied with figuring out what exactly caused the wounds. He would rather focus on the actual torture than the victim. He couldn't go there yet. He had to prepare. If he went in now, he may as well sign the death sentence on logic, on finding who did this to John, and act in heated, messy revenge instead of the cool, utterly annihilating retaliation this deserved.

Flagellation was most likely with the way the wounds were split and how they tapered off at the ends. But some cuts were so small, not caused by a whip but something more like a knife. Some others were too wide for either. It was as if the torturer used every weapon in their arsenal like trying samples of ice cream, seeing which was sweetest, which would make John scream most—

No. Don't go there. Not yet.

John groaned softly and shifted, but even unconscious he registered pain and soon stopped.

They would be here for quite some time, until John recovered.  _If_  he recovered—

 _Don't_ go there yet.

Medical help was unwise. If this agency could find Sherlock in Bruges, they could most certainly find John in Leipzig. And even if it hadn't been the agency to do this to him, whoever it was had been left unsatisfied and bloodthirsty, and they would be on the prowl. Some of the cuts suggested that they had meant to kill John at the end. The thought made something inside Sherlock knot itself and turn cold. He had watched John as the train left Bruges, but he had been reassured that they would meet later, when John was conscious and healthy and whole, not when John collapsed at his brother's doorstep, every inch of him slick with blood.

"John…listen to me."

John didn't move.

"Listen—" He cleared his throat, but his voice sounded no less hoarse. "Listen to me, John. You have to—you have to—"

Sherlock trails off, finding himself unable to keep talking. It's a cocktail of shame and embarrassment and grief and guilt, all mixing together into a highly-flammable combustion that rises up to the heat of his burning heart. It's going to explode soon, and he doesn't know what he'll do, who he may hurt, whose death he might be responsible for.

"John." He nudges his best friend, the man he wants to protect; the man he loves.

The man he loves and wants to protect does not respond.

"John. Just stop it. Stop this. You're being childish. I know you're faking it just so I know what it feels like to have everything taken from you. I know you're faking it, you idiot…you'll be happy to know that you proved your point…John, do you hear me? You've proved your point. You've won. You can wake up now. You can stop this."

John remains unresponsive save for a quiet exhale of breath.

Sherlock leans back in his chair, feeling his throat swell shut as knots of cold iron churn in his stomach like ice.

There are no tears.

It's a quiet breaking, a quiet crack widening on an atom, splitting it further.

It will break apart soon if John can't mend it. He can feel it, he felt it when he was drunk and yelling because he hadn't known what else to do to stop it.

"John…"

* * *

"Sh—Sher…lock."

He had only  _heard_  John's broken voice once, that last time, when their positions were switched and his eyes had been shut. Now they were open and he could finally pair that voice to a face, but he didn't want to.

"John." He leans forward, meeting his friend's half-opened eyes. They're a dull blue, faded from sleep and a consistence haze of pain, like fog.

"Are you…" John swallows, his voice as cracked and parched as his torn skin. "Are you alright?"

One mad laugh escaped Sherlock.

"I'm not the one who just spat Death in the face, John."

"No…I know…"

"How are you feeling?"

"Wonderful." John croaked. "Just bloody fantastic."

"You must be hungry. Even if you're not, I know Mycroft has tea here—"

He was cut off by John's weak chuckle.

"I almost forgot what that looked like."

"Here, I'll just go and—"

"No!" Jon shouted suddenly and Sherlock paused. "No, just…stay. Please." God, the way John looked up at him might make a religious man out of him yet. "I can't —if…you can't go again."

Sherlock sat back down.

The tea could wait. Everything could wait.

* * *

Mikheia stared at the blood stains on the empty bed. It made him think of the time a bird flew into his window and left its vague greasy imprint on the glass before plummeting to its death. His sister had gone out to find it and bury it because she loved to do silly things like that, only to find the bird being chewed apart by the dog he had saved on the Sniper's Alley.

"It's not going to clean itself." Sherlock said, peering at the stains like they had personally insulted him.

"I know."

Yet neither of them moved, struck into stillness by the sprawling red, like veins of rust on a dry riverbed.

The toilet flushed from behind them and it snapped them out of their reverie. Sherlock moved faster than Mikheia had ever seen him, even on then night John had collapsed into a bloody mess in the foyer (was that really only yesterday?), snatching up all four corners of the sheets and balling them up in arms. No sooner had he gathered them up then the door to the bathroom creaked weakly open and John staggered out, stiff with soreness and sleep and pain, dressed in crisp trousers that obviously were not his. This was due in part to Mikheia and Sherlock's shameless dig through Mycroft's clothes while John had been unconscious and their acquiring of some acceptable trousers and a few shirts. John had been too uncomfortable putting on a shirt with his fresh wounds, but he had happily accepted the trousers, muttering something about how at least they weren't women's slacks.

"Come on," Mikheia said, taking his arm as gently as he could. "I'll make you something to eat."

John mumbled a slurred response but allowed himself to be led away. Sherlock tried not to glance at the many arching cuts on John's pale back; they would need to be bandaged again soon. He turned from the retreating figures, letting the sheets unfold out of his arms in a cascade of red-stained cloth. The sight of blood was only obscured from where his white fingers gripped the linen.

He wanted to protect John, to make sure no one would ever hurt him again, to make sure that his back was never split open and he never had to suffer at the hands of another. But, as much as he hated to admit it, he had no means to, at least not at present. After he had stripped off John's bloody clothes he had searched for his gun, but it was missing. Mikheia still had his, but there was little ammunition and none could be found here unless they left the house. If someone were to attack them in the night, all Sherlock had was his wits, close combat skills, and whatever was close to him that he could throw.

He needed to call Mycroft.

On John's behalf, of course.

* * *

Sherlock had been quiet after he had woken up, barely talking, barely  _moving_ , which was both normal and unusual. He looked like a house of cards about to fold in on itself, trembling and fragile. He was staring at John but his mind was miles away. He could have been staring at a pile of stones for all he knew.

John had watched him for a while, unable to talk, unable to think, unable to feel anything but the tear of his shirt as it was sliced open, the stinging as his back was slashed, the careful precision of the knife as it drew across his skin where he couldn't see, like it was being handled by a surgeon. He hadn't felt anything other than the desire to get to Leipzig. He had made a promise, he had  _promised_ Sherlock that he would come back, and he would, even if it killed him. And it almost had. He couldn't even begin to think of what Sherlock must have gone through, seeing him collapse onto the door like that. He hadn't wanted to go that quickly, he at least wanted to tell him what happened, to tell him where he was hurt before he lost consciousness, but John Watson wanted a lot of things that never happened as he wanted them to.

As he woke and stared at Sherlock, who stared right back at him, he saw something in his eyes, something painful and cold and heavy, like iron stuck in deep water where no light shone through.

"Why is my hair wet?' He had managed to croak out and Sherlock blinked, focusing again on John. The spell was broken, the dream was over.

"You're smarter than most, John. Why do you think?" Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "We had to get the blood off you. I treated you respectfully, if that's what you're worried about. No one laughed at you. I wasn't in a particularly _jovial_  mood anyways."

His tone was biting, but not towards John. John knew he was edging on the sharp precipice of dangerous thoughts. He knew where that tone led; what the consequences where.

"Don't…don't go after them."

"Who is 'them'?" Sherlock had asked quietly, but his voice trembled like hollow metal that had been struck.

John closed his eyes, feeling the fresh hot blood trickle down his back, feeling the cold sweat break out, feeling his eyes clenching shut underneath the blindfold, feeling the abject terror that he might never see Sherlock, even though he had just found him again. Despite the numbing pain that ate away at him, that tore his skin to raw pulp, he'd felt a sense of happiness. Happiness, because at least Sherlock and Mikheia had made it to Leipzig. At least they were safe, where these fuckers couldn't get to them. If John were to die, let it be so Sherlock could live.

If he were honest with himself, he had been ready to die that night, ready to bleed out onto the floor and give his life for his best friend and a boy he had only just begun to know.

"I don't…I don't know." John swallowed, his throat dry after the heat of a breaking fever. "I'm sorry, Sherlock, I'm sorry—"

" _Don't_!" Sherlock stood, a snarl on his face. "Don't you dare apologise to me, John!"

John shut his eyes, closing out the angry, trembling Sherlock, before opening them again to a Sherlock with his back to him, running a hand through his hair.

"Sherlock."

He turned, his face blank but heavy with something he didn't want John to see.

"I have to pee, so…help me up, will you?"

* * *

John sat numbly at the kitchen table, his back bowed and aching. He could still feel the slice of the whip as it cut into his skin, could still smell the cigarette smoke that hung about the room like cheap and heavy cologne, could still hear the laughter and taunts as each took his turn sending the air snapping. His teeth ground together. A shudder cracked through him, sending a fresh pain reverberating through him, through all the gulfs and canyons of cuts and wounds on him. He didn't want to look down, didn't want to see the damage. Not yet.

Mikheia walked over to him, wearing a floral apron, and tilted his tray down, sending a cascade of good-smelling food onto his plate.

"I made cookies." He said happily, tossing the tray into the sink and taking off the apron. "But you call them biscuits, yes? You British are very odd; everything is mixed up when I am with you. I found the ingredients in the oddest place, in the back of the pantry, like someone was trying to hide them—"

"Mycroft has a weakness for sweets." Sherlock said, swooping into the room and sitting opposite of John. "You dangle a piece of cake in front of him and he'll run a wheel enough to power all of London for weeks."

John felt a small smile come onto his face. Mikheia looked at him, his head cocked to the side.

"Why are you not eating? Many people would be happy to have an excuse to eat them." Mikheia took one and bit into it. "See? I am helping you by showing you how delicious and not poisoned they are."

"John, you've got to eat something." Sherlock said.

"Hark who's talking." He said dully.

"Yes, our roles seemed to have reversed, very funny, ha ha, now let's move on." Sherlock held out a biscuit. "Eat it."

"I just…you really think sweets are the way to go after I nearly bled out last night?"

"Replenish your blood sugars."

"That's the excuse diabetics and the Red Cross use, Sherlock. Don't try it on me."

"John, for God's sake, just eat the damn biscuit."

John sighed and took it, swallowing the whole thing down in one bite.

"Well?"

"It was nice. It was an acceptable biscuit."

Mikheia stood and walked over to the trash can before spitting out a mouthful of biscuit, a smile on his face.

"You were right, sir." He said, taking the plate of biscuits and putting them on the counter.

John blanched. "Right about what?" He turned to Sherlock, who had a slightly apologetic look on his face. "Sherlock, what the hell did you do now?"

"Nothing, John."

"I'm serious."

"I may have had Mikheia put a crushed morphine tablet into the biscuit you just ate."

"Sherlock!" John cried, standing in shock despite the protest of every inch of his skin.

"What? What is so bad about that, John? You're in pain, it's only going to help you—"

"I know you did it with the best intentions, but I—whoa—Christ—" John suddenly swayed back in the chair, his body relaxing as the rigidity bled out of him. It felt like his blood had turned to air and he was rising out of his seat, yet he knew gravity was still working as it always had. He felt himself falling, but then Sherlock was there, catching him, and somehow he and Mikheia managed to get him back into that fucking spare bedroom that he had been burning in all night and all day.

The sheets were changed. John wondered which of them did it.

"I need to bandage your wounds, John." Sherlock said, moving around the room as Mikheia propped John against the headboard. "We can't risk an infection that would send you to the hospital. Anyone could find you there."

"Mrmph." John replied, having fallen forwards over onto the bed, his voice muffled by the mattress before he managed to turn his head.

Mikheia, laughing, helped him sit up as he turned him towards the wall. "Sorry! Just sit up and hold the headboard if you can." John sighed, but obliged, knowing it was admittedly the most comfortable position he could afford right now.

"I know that I'd be vulnerable and I know you haven't seen me in a while Sherlock, but I'm still a doctor. I think I'd know what's best in this situation. And you could have told me what you were planning."

"I could have." Sherlock admitted. "But this way was more enjoyable."

"You love an elaborate plan, don't you?" John groaned before jumping at the achingly cold substance being spread over his back.

"It's an antibiotic cream." Sherlock explained without having to ask. "Mycroft may as well have prepared for the apocalypse with the way he's stocked this house. Mikheia, can you get a few extra boxes of gauze? It's down in the basement on the third shelf."

John heard footsteps as Mikheia left. There was a tear as Sherlock opened the first package of bandages and John felt the rough, warm cloth drape over his back.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock."

No answer, just heaviness.

"Shut up, John." He said finally, continuing to wrap the dry gauze around. "You are not at fault."

"I'm still sorry. I promised you I'd get back alive."

"And so you did."

John cringed at the coldness of both cream and voice.

"Don't you dare, Sherlock."

"Don't what?"

"Don't shut me out. I know last night must have been hard for you—"

"On the contrary, it was this morning that was difficult—"

"Don't you feel  _anything_?" John snapped. "Anything? Anything at all?" He paused, thinking on his next words. "For all I know, those three years may have been a breeze for you. You haven't told me anything, nothing about what happened to you or what you've been doing. All you've done is ask about me, which is all well and good, but you have said nothing, not a  _thing_ , about you. Hell, if I hadn't met Mikheia in the Kremlin I'd have no sodding clue who he is! You're shutting me out, Sherlock, and I—I really,  _really_ , don't want you to."

Sherlock looked at him, lips pursed like he had tasted something sour, like he was chewing on his words, before he spoke.

"Do you want to know why you're wrong?"

"No," John sighed, "but you're going to tell me anyways."

"Those three years were not a _breeze_  for me. In fact they were the opposite of a  _breeze_. They were windless, a vacuum of darkness and heat and misery. The only reason that I've asked about you so much is because I spent every single day, all one thousand two-hundred and a half of them, wondering. Wondering about you, thinking about you, worrying about you. I had thoroughly convinced myself that you were in Baker Street, moving on with your life. I am not shutting you out, in fact, it's the contrary. I am letting you back in. Forgive me if I am being callous about it, but it's a new experience for me. Once people are out, they're out. You're the first. You're the first in this osmotic practise."

Sherlock paused. He wanted to say something, but didn't know how to go about it.

"I know how I feel about leaving you, I know how I feel about being away from you, and I know how I feel about coming back to you, as unexpectedly welcome as it was. I also know that you are still upset with me for what I did, but I think this rather makes us even. We both have seen each other dead in another sense than the cessation of bodily function."

Sherlock sat beside him, barely moving the bed.

"Ours is a simple solution. We forgive each other for wrongdoing and we move on. I want that. I want it very much. But—but I don't know how to start. I want to know what you want me to  _say_ , John. Tell me what to say that will help you begin to forgive me."

John watched at him for a moment, eyes passing over the detective, over his dishevelled clothing that he hadn't slept in but still wore from yesterday, then back to his face.

"Tell me you're really here."

"I'm really here."

"Tell me I'm not dreaming."

"You are not dreaming."

"Tell me you won't leave me again, at least without telling me."

"I will never leave you again. I'll never premeditate it if I do."

John stared at him a moment, then threw his arms around that scrawny git of a detective. Despite the pain that bit at every inch of him and despite his muscles screaming in protest, John clutched Sherlock tightly to him, feeling tears prick at his eyes.

"I missed you, you idiot."

He felt Sherlock smile against his ear before his long arms wrapped around him and his head settled in the curve of his neck.

"I missed you too, John."


	15. a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "all our lonely kicks are getting harder to find
> 
> we'll play nuns versus priests until somebody cries
> 
> all our lonely kicks that make us saintly and thin
> 
> we'll play nuns versus priests until somebody wins"
> 
> 'Little Faith' - The National

It was the witching hour, a time most active in darkness where the only light shone from the stars above.

Mikheia snored softly on the couch in the library, a book draped over his chest and his hand resting on a pile rising up from the floor.

Down the hall, light shone through a cracked door. John sat on the bed, his back turned, and Sherlock stood behind him, unravelling more gauze among the scattered medical supplies for the second time that day, technically the first of the new day considering the lateness of the hour.

"Why did you do it?" Sherlock asked, pressing more gauze to one of John's wounds. They seemed endless, like staring up into a starry night, blood smeared across the heavens. "Let them recruit you?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. You do many things for many reasons; you are not a man who does anything because he simply doesn't know better. Why?"

John inhaled through his nose sharply, steadying himself.

"I—Watching you fall, hearing you hit the ground as I lay on the street with a mouthful of pavement, it—it  _destroyed_  me, Sherlock. I didn't know what else to do. I started looking for things that made me feel in control again, and the agency was the best option."

Sherlock's hands hesitated.

"I'm sorry, John." He said quietly.

"I know." John sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I know you are. But that doesn't change the fact that you let me watch you fall, you let me believe you were dead. Friends don't do that to each other."

"Could you blame me for not telling you? It's not like I've had friends who have cared about my well-being."

"But  _I_  did, Sherlock. I still do. You may not have much common sense with emotions, but I know that you knew what you were doing to me. And you went full steam ahead anyways and bollocks to the consequences."

"What do you want me to say to you?"

"It doesn't work like that, Sherlock. I can't just tell you what to say."

"You did yesterday."

"That was different, and, in my defence, you  _did_  drug me. I can't tell you what you should be feeling when you betray your best friend."

"I know what I feel, John. I feel guilty, I feel miserable, I've  _been_  miserable ever since I left. I've been responsible for all your wounds—for all of  _this_ —because I didn't tell you what I was doing. But you have to know that I did it for you and Molly and Mrs. Hudson and even _Lestrade_  of all people if you can believe that. Moriarty had you all pinned under his thumb, he had people out there ready to kill you, and so I did what I could to ensure that didn't happen. He killed himself to make sure I had no other alternative but to jump. And I did, for you and for everyone."

Sherlock paused, letting his fingers linger over a newly placed bandage.

"I knew what I would be doing to you. I knew, and I'm sorry. You have to believe me, John. I've been—I've been quite inhuman since I left. I did things I'm not proud of, I hurt people because I couldn't control myself, I even went on a hunger strike because I thought some poor old woman in Hong Kong was trying to poison me. Turns out she just thought I liked tofu, and she was correct. I wish she had just  _told_  me instead, though. At least I could have enjoyed it…"

"I—you went to Hong Kong?"

"Yes, and I'd rather not go back. I burned some bridges there that can't be rebuilt."

John laughed, quite maniacally.

"Was the hunger strike the worst of it, then? Went without dinner some nights like a badly behaving kid in time-out?" He asked with a bitterness he didn't mean in his voice. "I'd say I don't think you know what I went through, Sherlock, but I think you do."

Sherlock nodded.

"You joined an international agency that sends assassins to dispatch and scourge unfavourable people from the world. That tells me enough."

"You asked me why I did it. I still can't tell you why, mainly since I don't really know myself." John paused, wincing as an old bandage was peeled off. "I was alone, I needed the money to stay on Baker Street and the clinic just wasn't enough since I had to pay the whole rent. I…I was hired because of an accident—only it wasn't really an accident—and they sent me through training." Sherlock began to wrap gauze around John's arm and he lifted it up so he could wind it all the way around. "It was a lot like the army actually. I think they were looking for people like me; someone maladjusted and lonely with a history of military experience—"

"Do you love her?"

"What? Who?"

"Mary." Sherlock said quietly as he continued wrapping the gauze. "Do you love her? It would be perfectly understandable, considering she was there for you, supported you through an emotional crisis. It isn't unexpected that you would have a romantic inclination towards her—" His eyes turned up to John's face, unreadable and blank. Red flag. He backtracked. "Never mind. It doesn't matter. If you do, I will try my best to not get in the way. You won't even notice me."

"I doubt you can do that, Sherlock."

"You haven't seen my camouflage skills, have you?" Sherlock replied, taping the gauze around John's arm. "I've gotten quite good over the years. They're more than proficient—"

"No, I doubt you can stay out of the way."

"Why is that?"

"Because I love you." He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, as if it was common knowledge. "And not in the way that I love Mary. Not in the way that I love anyone else."

Sherlock's heart lurched, like something heavy had knocked into it and sent it off-course for a moment.

"John—"

"Just thought you should know." He shrugged then winced at the ensuing pain. "Certainly been keeping it to myself long enough."

What to do what to do what to do—what should he say? John, I love you as well. John, I think of you every day, whether you're with me or not. John, you're better than a caffeinated cigarette, if humanity was finally smart enough to bring that into existence…

"Even if you don't love her like that, she's certainly got a fondness for you."

Good going, genius.

John hesitated before he answered. The lack of Sherlock's acknowledgment of his feelings probably stung more than a little bit.

"What makes you say that?"

"Other than her copious attempts at eye-fucking you?" Sherlock asked and John choked a laugh of surprise down at hearing him curse. "10-15-8-14. Do you remember?"

"That was the code she gave you at the station, right?"

"Yes. It was a coded sequence; the numbers corresponded to letters in the alphabet. Easy enough to figure out. To save you the mental strain, it spells—"

"J-O-H-N." John finished, spelling out each letter.

Sherlock stopped wrapping the gauze around his torso and leaned back on his heels, looking up at John.

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew. I told her to use it." John said with an amused smile. "Mary is not a threat to  _you_  Sherlock, so stop treating her like one. She's already saved your life twice, which is more than I can say for what she did in Bruges."

"Twice?" Sherlock made a sound of annoyance before continuing to wrap the bandages around John's middle once more. "I was only aware of one instance."

"She saved me that night in the Kremlin." John said quietly, glad that Sherlock did not ask about Bruges. "I know you don't set much stock in expressing your feelings, but I'd like to believe that I'm rather important to you, as you are to me. And so if she saved my life, she saved yours as well, in a sense."

"I was never in danger in the Kremlin, John."

"But I was." John sucked in a breath as Sherlock's hand grazed one of the deeper wounds, another mark of the whip that had to be left to the open air. "You can ask me about that. I can tell you've been wanting to."

"I did not think it was best to ask a trauma victim about past abuse so soon after a reoccurrence." Sherlock answered. "But since I have your permission, yes, I would like to hear your recollection."

"I don't remember much of what happened. I know my contact in Novgorod was a snitch and I know I was drugged and taken into the Kremlin. I kind of drifted in and out after that, but I remember hearing your name and—it sounds so odd now—but I remember the taste of chewing gum and the smell of gunpowder."

"Gunpowder? I know the military is underfunded, John, but I hardly think you had to resort to older weapons in Afghanistan to know what that smells like—"

"When I was a kid my grandfather showed me how to load an antique gun, and I remember the smell of the powder he used. I smelled it in the Kremlin. It was unmistakably the same thing. Anyways," John sniffed, as if trying to rid himself of the smell, but all he could smell now was the scent of antiseptic. "After I came to and managed to untie myself I had this rush, it was like my blood was sunlight or something; it—it kind of felt like I was  _happy_." An empty smile came on his face. "I'd kind of forgotten what that felt like."

"When was the last time you were happy, John?" Sherlock asked, but his tone was clinical, like a doctor was telling him to look into the light to test his vision.

"I don't remember." He answered quietly. "Sometimes Mary will make me laugh or Mrs. Hudson or Lestrade will stop by for a chat or Harry would call, but…but it wasn't happiness, you know? It was hollow, like a bucket full of air. It was like after I was shot, when I came back and everything tasted the same, except I wasn't alone after St. Bart's. I just felt like I was."

"If it alleviates your suffering, you may care to know that I fared little better." Sherlock sniffed. "I lived my life before you and I lived it with you and I lived it after you, and only one of those periods was of any value to me."

He did not miss the marginal widening of John's eyes as he tore off another strip of medical tape. He should savour the feeling since it was as close as he could come to admitting his own feelings without blurting them out and sounding like a love-struck, starry eyed schoolgirl.

Sherlock stopped his motions, tucking one end of the unfinished dressing in so it wouldn't fall out while he thought.

"You said you tasted chewing gum?" He asked, standing up and beginning to pace.

"In the Kremlin?" John asked, trying to recollect the elements of their cooling conversation. "Yeah. It was mint flavoured, just like the kind I normally use." His brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Antique gunpowder, if the scent was unmistakably the kind your grandfather used, would have contained cordite. Cordite is a smokeless propellant used in World War I and II era weapons, although it has been since discontinued due to better technological advances. If it is ingested, it gives off a slight exhilaration, like you were halfway to intoxication. If taken in large quantities it produces a state of ecstasy and makes the victim see visions before instilling a raging fever, which soldiers used to get sick leave." Sherlock paused, his feet rooting in place. "Did you see anything odd?"

"Odd?" John frowned. "I don't think so—"

The shadow of the Golem—his own shadow reflected onto the wall—stretching itself before him.

"I saw the Golem's shadow." He said quietly, staring at the wall. "But I didn't realise it was just my own…I thought he was there, with me." He looked up at Sherlock, who was staring at him with a quiet attentiveness. "I saw it before, too, before I even flew to Russia. I saw it in an alleyway after…after…"

 _Think_! What had happened that night? What did he remember?

John shut his eyes.

* * *

He had been assigned a businessman. Not something entirely uncommon, surely, but it was unexpected all the same. He'd never understand the jealous rivalries that boiled under the skin of the economical world.

He sighed as he chewed his gum, the taste already losing its flavour and reminding him that he was essentially chewing a piece of rubber. He had been perched on the balcony of the house for a good half hour already. The target was late.

A light turned on above his head. John looked straight up, past the rim of his cap, the light sloshing over his face in the dark. He felt the muscles in his neck strain and move as he popped a bubble.

Time to move.

John quietly unattached himself from mind and ledge and opened the window.

The man had been foolish to assume that he was safe in his house. He'd chosen perhaps the worst place to barricade himself, in a room where one wall was completely lined with ceiling-to-floor length windows. That poor, stupid bastard. He'd never learn. They all never learned.

"You would have been safer in the bathroom." John said quietly, enjoying watching the man startle as he realised just how trapped he was. "There's only one way in that you have to focus on."

The man seemed afraid. John thought there was nothing particulalry frightening about him.

"You can look at me if you want." He said. "It's alright. Wouldn't want the last thing you see to be that fucking awful wallpaper."

The man turned, coming face to face with him.

"You're so pale—" He was cut short as a quiet bullet entered his frontal lobe and exited out of the back of his brain. He collapsed to the floor, bleeding from that small hole planted so much like a third eye in the middle of his forehead.

"Sorry I disappointed you." John answered coldly. "But you are rather late. I'm afraid you couldn't get my usual treatment."

 _Usual_  being the operative word. John's usual treatment involved rather more distance—say from the rooftop opposite—and rather less breaking-and-entering. Why did the man say he was so pale? Why did that surprise him? Such an odd choice of last words…

Gloved hands softly pulled the cell phone from the dead man's hand, clutched so tightly around it. John thought a moment before clicking  _unlock_. His wife's birthday: 10-15. Their anniversary: 8-14. Why did he even bother with such an obvious passcode?

"Veliky Novgorod." John muttered. He looked at the corpse. "At least you're useful."

His phone rang three times.

* * *

John opened his eyes.

"I was assigned a businessman and then an investor that night," John began softly, "and it went well enough, even though the investor never showed up. The first one was clean. He didn't fight me like some others did. The agency had told me to get his phone if I could. His passcode was easy to get, but the agency wanted his travel plans. He was going to Novgorod." John looked up at Sherlock, confusion on his face. "Why was he going to Novgorod?"

"Business?" Sherlock guessed blandly, sealing the gauze wrapped around John's hand with tape.

"And…why would they send me the next day? What was so important about bloody  _Novgorod_?" John ruffled his hair in agitation. "Anyways, when I left the investor's house after he didn't show, I saw the shadow. I—" He smiled briefly. "I didn't tell Mary this, but I thought it was you at first. I followed, but I lost it. God, that just sounds insane, doesn't it? Trying to run after my own shadow…"

Sherlock stared down at him a moment.

"Tell me John," He asked quietly. "Have you been eating anything that the agency has directly given you?"

"No," John answered quickly. "I mean, there wasn't really any opportunity they could've offered it to me other than—" John's eyes widened. "Oh Christ…" He trailed off, the horrified look on his face sending a searing burn through Sherlock's blood.

"What? What did you eat?"

John buried his head in his bandaged hands, exhaling heavily. "Gum. I've been chewing the gum they gave me."

"Gum? They gave you  _gum_? What kind of complimentary do they think that is? In fact I—oh." Sherlock's face settled into realisation. " _Oh_."

The drug was in the gum— _no_ —it  _was_  the gum, only with a vague synthetic mint flavouring, which would make perfect sense since cordite is three-fifths nitroglycerin so it would taste sweet naturally…

" _God_  I've been stupid haven't I, John? John?" He turned and frowned.

"They've been drugging me, Sherlock." John said hoarsely, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "They've been drugging me, and I've been killing people for them." A sour laugh escaped him. "I didn't even think twice about it! Anyone else would have realised what was going on,  _anyone_  else would've realised that they shouldn't trust an agency that pays in blood…" John let his head fall back into waiting hands. "I must be the most worthless person on the face of the whole bloody planet right about now—"

"Don't you ever,  _ever_  call yourself worthless, John." Sherlock said, kneeling in front of him and taking his hands away from his face. "You are many things, but worthless? You'll never be worthless. Never. Do you understand? You mean so much to—so much to me. You will never be worthless in my eyes, not even if you shot me in both kneecaps and insulted my mother."

"Well, there have been many instances where I almost did both of those things." John smiled weakly before it faded back. "Do you know how close I was to shooting you that day at the church in Bruges because the agency told me to? And not even in your kneecaps. I knew where that bullet would go."

"But you  _didn't_ , John. You didn't, because you're wonderful and brilliant and you realised who you were aiming at before you shot." Sherlock paused, waiting for his mouth to catch up to his thoughts. "Mikheia saw you that day in the Kremlin. I know he did, you know he did, and he knows he did. I didn't want to believe it was you. I wanted to believe that you were sitting in Baker Street and moving on without me. I wanted so  _badly_  for you to forget me, John, if it meant you would be happy. But you didn't. And you also didn't shoot Mikheia after he helped you. That tells me all I need to know concerning your worth. You are everything, John. Everything. Now that you're here, now that you're right in front of me, I don't ever want to see you away ever again."

"That's stupid." John said with a slight smile.

"Pardon?"

"I said that's stupid. I can't  _always_  be with you. Who will do the shopping since you hate the grocery store? Who will work when we don't have a case?" John's smile faded and he put a hand over Sherlock's. "I may be  _away_ sometimes. But I'll never leave you."

"You say that like we can go back to Baker Street like nothing has happened."

John looked at him with bright eyes and a sad smile. "Well, can't we?" John stopped a moment, thinking of his next words. "I don't want to drag you down, Sherlock. If—if you think your work is unfinished, if there's more of Moriarty that you have to get rid of and you have to leave, I want to go with you."

"I think you know very well of my intention to stay with you, John." Sherlock paused. "But you are why I left. I left so you might live unencumbered and safe. I can't be responsible for any more wounds."

"I'm a big boy, Sherlock." John said with a smile. "And I've got a medical degree, so it's not like I can't handle whatever wounds I get."

"Yes, because so far all this—" He waved a hand, indicating the bandages covering John, more visible than his own skin. "Has been solely your doing."

"Alright, so I may need help sometimes if I can't reach."

"I'm afraid Baker Street might have to wait for now."

"We can live together without it. Baker Street is just an address we use for mail."

"John, what you said earlier—you know—you know I—"

"Yeah, I know."

"How?"

"It was only a matter of time. Even the slowest of us catch up sometimes on the things that matter." He said, smiling up at him.

"It—I feel like when I saw the Hound, John, that night in Baskerville."

John smiled at the ingenuous statement. Sherlock wasn't just new to love for a man like John was, he was new to love and all its sweet tangles and snares and beautifully painful trappings. His heart was still fresh from the sting as it was pierced, and the tissue hadn't healed over yet.

"I know. I used to feel like that too."

"What did you do?"

"I overlooked it, usually. It hurt, and no one wants to hurt if they can help it, so I ignored it."

"Usually? How often has this happened to you?"

"Just once."

"Once?" Sherlock felt a smile crawl on his face, unwarranted but welcomed. "And does that have an expiration date?"

"I expect not. It's survived long enough, even when I starved it. Even when it hibernated because there was nothing else for it to do but to be ignored and wait in the darkness."

"What are we going to do about it?"

"Well, we can do nothing, leave it unacknowledged and keep the status quo…we can pretend we don't know—" He looked up at Sherlock and thought better, understanding that the detective disliked that idea as much as he did. "Or, you can let me be the experienced know-it-all, and you can be the confused and constantly awed sidekick."

"You've never been a sidekick, John." Sherlock said, his silvered eyes meeting John's. "You've been a friend,  _my_  friend. You've never been anything but an equal in your own right."

"Glad to hear it." John smiled, but there was something inside it, something bright and alive that made Sherlock's heart pound in a way he hadn't often felt. As John leaned forward his heart grew louder, more frantic, more crazed, breaking out of its rusted state.

"John…you know I—I—"

John's breath ghosted over his face. They were close, closer than they'd ever been if the handcuffs incident was discounted.

"I know. You don't have to say it."

Sherlock tilted his head forward.

They jolted apart as Mikheia's scream tore through the hollow house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fucking LOVE The National. Wonderfully depressing music, in the best way


	16. the rusted heart

The smashing of glass.

The one lone, terrible scream, cut off by a wet choking, reminding John of a trauma patient that once drowned in their own blood.

"Watson! We know you're here!" A voice shouted, scratched and scraped to roughness by a poorly controlled cigarette addiction. "You want the boy alive then you show your face!"

There was a stifled grunt of pain, mostly likely from Mikheia being dragged up by his hair. John relaxed slightly.

He was still alive. For now.

John looked to Sherlock, still so close to him, into those silver coated eyes right on level with his. With an imperceptive shake of his head, a slight twitch to most, Sherlock conveyed to John his most immediate, raw thoughts before they could be processed. Don't. Don't go. Stay.

"I have to go." John said firmly, and even though Sherlock didn't like it, he understood why. He already had a body count that Mikheia could not be added to. He understood, but did not approve.

Before he could let himself or the way Sherlock was silently looking at him talk him down from the noble ledge, John stood and hastily shrugged on a white t-shirt to hide his wounds although some, like the whip marks, were still left open and uncovered. The wounds might bleed or weep since they haven't properly scabbed over yet, so…right. He strode to the nearest dresser and dug through the clothes before finding an old black bike-rider's jacket that looked to be his size and pulled it on. As Mycroft was not one for motorbikes, John resorted to reading between the lines and leaving it at that.

He turned to Sherlock, who was sitting on the bed with the blankest, most barren face that John felt his resolve crumbling. He knelt before him, wincing a bit at the tender pain that sliced through him, and took Sherlock's face in his hands.

"Sherlock, you're going to have to trust me." He said steadily, barely betraying the shake of his voice. "I'll come back." He added quietly. "I'll come back to you. I'm never going to leave you. I'll just be…away. Only for a moment. You know that, right? Only for a moment."

"Yes." Sherlock nodded, unable to say anything else.

Then, with swiftness that he had thought John incapable of, John leaned forward, grabbed the back of his head, and pressed his lips to Sherlock's. John's mouth was warm and dry and alive, and stayed too briefly before he drew away, pausing a moment and staring at Sherlock with a steady, unwavering expression that Sherlock had only seen once before, when John had semtex strapped to his chest, and that he had never wanted to see again.

John backed away from him, that terrible, brave look on his face.

It was then Sherlock realised what he was going to do.

"John, no, don't—" He stood, but was cut off as John quickly shut the door and locked it from the outside. In that horrible moment, Sherlock felt there wasn't an appropriate enough curse for Mycroft's seemingly harmless fetish for antique décor.

There was a slight pause on the other side as John laid a hand against the door.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock." He murmured quietly. "But I have a lot of things to make up for."

Sherlock didn't respond, but pressed his hand against his side of the door, briefly indulging in the fantasy that in that moment their hands were perfectly aligned before dismissing it as highly improbable.

There was the sound of fading footsteps. The rust began to peel off Sherlock's seldom cared for heart, revealing the tender, unused muscle underneath and making him aware of it and its pain all the more strongly.

Sherlock pressed his ear as hard as he could against the door, focusing down the small hallway to the den, where he heard John stop.

"Well, well." The sandpaper voice said in the darkness. "John Watson. We meet at last." A pause. A consideration. "You don't look like I thought you would."

"Nor do you." John's response was curt but muffled, white noise submerged underwater.

"Reckon I look a right sight better than you do though." A low whistle. "Bloody hell, they really did a number on you, didn't they?"

"You could say that. I hear I have you to thank."

"You'll have a lot more to thank after I'm through with you, mate—"

Two loud gunshots cut him off.

One shattered the silence. The other shattered Sherlock.

They may as well have shot  _him_  with the way he felt in that moment, the way the cold shock pulsed through him, coldly filling his blood with no no no no no, not him, not John, not when he had just saved him, not when he was so close, not when the spot on the bed was still warm from where he had been sitting, he couldn't just slip through his hands now—

He found himself banging against the door with a strength he didn't know he had until it ripped from its hinges and he was scrambling upwards in a mad dash to the foyer.

How could he be moving if his heart had stopped?

The wood floor was slick with blood, dark and glowing in the moonlight. Two bodies lay breathing, two bodies lay still.

John was sprawled in the middle of it, groaning and clutching his side.

"Johnjohnjohn…" Sherlock reached a trembling hand out to roll the doctor over.

"Fine," John wheezed, "I'm fine. One of them elbowed me in the stomach before I managed to send a bullet at him. Just…" A deep, rasping breath. "Just give me a minute."

Sherlock took in the two bodies, twin bullet holes in their foreheads. Henchmen, most likely hired guns, and poor shots too. It spoke quiet volumes of John's skill and marksmanship that he had stolen their guns and shot them both before they could even aim at him or Mikheia. Sherlock was proud of him, proud and perhaps a little awed and even jealous.

John, killing to save someone again. Always for someone else. Sherlock wondered if he'd ever be able to repay the favour.

"Where's the leader?" He asked.

"He jumped out the window." John gasped, nodding to the broken glass, the wind sending the curtains billowing.

"Are you alright?"

"What? Yes, Sherlock, I'm fine! He's getting away you know-"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes for a moment before grabbing John's collar, pulling him up and forward to meet his kiss. As their mouths met once more, they both blanked out for one brief moment, one glance of sunlight through a dark cloud passing overhead.

"You're more important than him, John." Sherlock murmured as he stared down at him through half-lidded eyes, his voice hoarse and quiet with something thick that he couldn't place.

Mikheia coughed from behind them.

"I'm fine by the way." He croaked hoarsely. One look from Sherlock told him that the boy had a bruise forming on his side where he'd been kicked and a cut to the cheek from glass shrapnel as the window was smashed from the outside, but that he was otherwise uninjured. There were worse injuries; gunshots, stabbings, a good mangling-

"Sherlock," John's voice brought him back. "Just go, go and be careful. We'll be alright, I promise. Here—" John handed him the gun that he had taken from one of the dead men before he shot them.

"John—"

"Go!" John barked, but Sherlock knew his irritation was not with Sherlock himself, but with the seconds that passed by and let the flypaper voice run further away.

Sherlock took one sparse second to stare at John, who was moving to stand and help Mikheia, before he turned and bolted out into the night.

* * *

He was happily surprised to find that Mycroft had installed motion sensor lights in his lawn. Apparently his love of antique décor fortunately did not extend to security.

He felt the familiar adrenaline burn twist and wind itself through his body as he ran, his breath steaming in the cool night air. He still felt John's mouth pressed to his, and as mysterious as he found the appeal of kissing, he actually  _enjoyed_ something in that basic act, enjoyed something in being able to meet John somewhere he felt they had always belonged.

But he could think of it all he wanted later, perhaps while snogging John some more, for science...and perhaps for himself. Okay, maybe more for himself—

 _Later_. Earmark it and tuck it away for later. There were more pressing issues at present.

What did he know of the situation he had just entered?

The man (most definitely a man) was armed and coldly dangerous considering the ease with which he attacked Mikheia (Sherlock would have to personally thank him for that) and threatened John. Yet he had others with him, so he knew what fight he was coming into and he wanted to be prepared ( _Not prepared enough, obviously_ Sherlock thought with a brief flash of pride for John). Now he was fleeing, the cowardly criminal's way out. So he had somewhere or something to flee to, which means he's foreign. He certainly sounded British-possibly-Welsh from what Sherlock could make out through the door. This just increased the likelihood that he was involved with John's agency.

Sherlock flew down the lawn, dewy grass coating his shoes, before he caught a flash of movement to his right, where the lawn banked off into a private garden lined with trellises and decorative statues, nice to look at in the light, but in darkness turned into looming objects to hide behind.

Oh yes, he'd be having a talk with Mycroft about the numerous disadvantages of his estate.

Sherlock walked into the garden quietly, or as quietly as one could when they knew they could be seen.

What would John do?

Spot the vantage points. One from each trellis wall, three in all ( _damn you Mycroft_ ), perhaps a few from behind the taller, broader statues, which left two, and then from his rear, near the beginning of what looked to be a hedge maze—

_Hedge maze? Oh for god's sake…_

A proclivity for luxury seemed to be Mycroft's Achilles' heel.

Sherlock stilled, his eyes sweeping the still, manicured garden.

It was too quiet. No movement.  _Any_  movement would make a noise, the shifting of feet on marble or dirt, the sound of a gun being cocked, the steam of breath in the air, but there was no movement.

Everything was still.

Suddenly, someone shouted from inside, audible through the door he had thoughtlessly left wide open, open for anyone to get in inconspicuously.

No, not someone—

"John…" Sherlock muttered. " _John_!"

He began a dead sprint over the lawn, his rusted heart beating away, oiled and slick with cold fear that sent something deep inside him boiling away, the years of its bitterness from its mistreatment flaking off.

Of course. Of course it was all a distraction, to get him lured away and tangled in darkness, a distraction for the sandpaper voice to go back and take the things that mattered, to go back and rob him of everything.

Another gunshot. Another shout.

His heart was working itself into a frenzied friction, grinding against his breastbone and sending painfully hot sparks against his chest.

"John!" He burst into the foyer, sliding over the previously shed blood that had trickled in from the den. As he breathed in, he smelled a hot, pervading, metallic scent, thick with iron.

This new blood was fresh.

This new blood was Mikheia's.

* * *

Mycroft was, if nothing else, effective at handling crises efficiently.

The helicopter air-lifted Mikheia to the nearest hospital, leaving the three to ride in a tense silence through the streets until they too arrived at the hospital.

Sherlock did not say one word, his face blank and cold. John wanted to ask why, but he didn't need to. Mycroft had the good sense to remain preoccupied with his phone for a majority of the trip save for informing them that Mikheia was in surgery and then again to inquire when he could get a full report from either of them pertaining to the events of the night. John remembered answering vaguely.

He didn't quite grasp much other than Sherlock's constant presence.

Sherlock bursting into the house after Mikheia had moved into the gunman's view from the window, Sherlock collapsing beside John as Mikheia cried out in pain, his shoulder bloody and raw, pulpy with destroyed muscle and exposed nerves, Sherlock at his side when he desperately tried to retreive his emergency medical knowledge and staunch Mikheia's wound, Sherlock beside him when Mycroft arrived, Sherlock quietly sitting next to him in the car, his hand covering John's as it rested on his knee (something that they both knew Mycroft noted), and then perched next to him, silently sedentary, in the hospital waiting room like a stone grotesque perched on Notre Dame.

"I guess you don't need me to save you anymore." Sherlock said an hour into their wait, the first thing he had said since the shooting, a calm smirk on his face.

"Don't be stupid." John said with a simple smile, sipping at the too-thin, piss-poor excuse for tea. "I'll always need you."

John, saying the things Sherlock couldn't.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed as John let his smile grow thin, wearing it too long before it faded.

"Show me, John."

"Show you what?" John asked innocently.

"Feigning ignorance does not compliment you. You're too good for it."

John hesitated before he began. "I thought you had missed it, earlier, you know." He said quietly, scratching at his ear with a grimace. "I thought maybe you hadn't noticed, but then why would you? It's not a spot people think about, even though you _apparently_ saw me naked after I passed out the other day, which we still need to talk about by the way—"

"John…" His tone was warning, indicating that he get to the point.

John stared at him a moment and sighed, looking all around the room as if anything there could offer distraction.

"There's one place you didn't bandage. I saw it this morning, once I—once I remembered how it felt when they carved it in." He swallowed roughly before pulling back a lock of hair by his left ear, giving Sherlock a perfect view of the letters cut into John's skin, rust coloured and curving around the flesh near the shell of his ear. They stared at him maliciously, taunting, a call from beyond the grave. He felt like he was staring into the Hound's eyes, like he was looking down at John from the roof, like John was sitting beside him, so tangibly close and warm, only this left a coldness in his heart, like wet iron that was beginning to freeze.

He reached out a hand to skim the letters.

_I.O.U._


	17. affection and perfidy

John could hear Mikheia's laugh from down the hallway as he neared the boy's door. So the nurse hadn't left yet. He should wait until she was done giving him the rounds.

Mikheia had been remarkably upbeat about the whole event, despite having a hole punched in his shoulder, despite blacking out from the pain right as Mycroft's helicopter landed on the front lawn (John hadn't missed Sherlock's eye roll), despite the hour long helicopter ride to Berlin, and despite being on three different kind of antibiotic-painkiller cocktails. Maybe that was what made him so happy…

He hadn't seen Sherlock since the detective had grazed his fingers over the raised skin, that scarring condemnation, that  _I.O.U._  like it was a chalk mark he hoped would wipe off before he stood and without another word stalked off down the hall. Part of John wanted to feel hurt, wanted to feel rejected, but he pushed back against it, knowing that it was Sherlock's nature to do things no one understood. But John understood; he understood very well actually.

Sherlock used his aloof attitude to distance himself from an issue, to give him a vantage point and clarity so he could spot and gather facts that his emotions blinded him of, but with John his mind was in constant fog and mist that hung over him like spider web, unable to escape, unable to burn away. He needed space, especially to clear his mind of the previous night's events, and John understood that, at least in essence. John, contrary to appearances, understood many things about Sherlock, like why he had allowed Mikheia to come with him to Bruges and then Leipzig (because nothing was ever just an  _accident_ with Sherlock), why he had looked at John so forlornly in that hotel room (because he didn't know how to say sorry, but John knew he wanted to), why he let John kiss him (because John was saying sorry), why he kissed John back (because he was saying sorry too), and why he had all but sprinted off down that hospital hallway after seeing John's ear.

John sighed. Mikheia had offered him a painkiller or two, just to take the initial bite out of his wounds, but John had refused, although not on the grounds of personal safety. The medicine was perfectly fine and appropriate for both of them to use, but he didn't want to. The pain kept him focused, kept him reminded of just what he had been through and that he had survived.

Maybe one day he would have the heart to tell Sherlock all that had really happened.

Something about this hospital made him uneasy. Mycroft had assured them copiously that the security on the hospital was airtight and that they were perfectly safe here in Berlin, but John still felt uncomfortable, especially after Sherlock's scoff at his brother's declarations of safety. Yet Sherlock would not allow Mikheia to be treated here if he felt it was fully unsafe. John smirked. Like Sherlock had any say in what happened now, much less where Mikheia was treated. And it wasn't like they had had many options to choose from after he'd been shot. They'd had to do the best with what they had. But he and Mycroft had silently agreed long ago to pretend in all situations like Sherlock was the one in charge and let him feel important, even if he was being an arsehole;  _especially_  if he was an arsehole, because that was usually when his mind burned at its brightest and they couldn't afford or care to break him from his revelations.

He dedicated himself to Sherlock, to going out to get groceries because Sherlock didn't like to, he took calls and cases like a secretary because Sherlock didn't care to talk to people if he deemed it unnecessary, he was at Sherlock's every beck and call like his own personal butler, and what did he get in return?

John shut his eyes tightly and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He'd been having misgivings to say the least about a relationship with Sherlock. He had doubts and fears just like everyone else, but they ran deeper whenever Sherlock was tangled in them.

He knew he was behaving too rashly, he knew that something so fresh shouldn't be spoiled so fast, but he couldn't stop the shadows from rising where they lay. He felt dazed, stunned, like everything around him was in motion and blurred yet he remained still among it all.

Everything had happened so fast, but he was to blame for kicking it into motion. He had kissed Sherlock first. He was responsible for whatever happened afterwards. Yet…he had thought he was going to die. He had stood up and kissed Sherlock and lock him in and left the room thinking he was walking to his death. But he was confident in his abilities, confident that he was the better man in the situation and, if anything, he'd get Mikheia out alive (which, technically, he had), confident that he could steal a gun, aim, and shoot before the other two. And he was proven right. But when Sherlock had kissed  _him_ , when their roles had switched and it was Sherlock kneeling over him, John's back soaking with someone else's blood, with a desperate emptiness on his face, John knew what his actions had done. He knew he had opened the box and there was no lidding it again. Sure, he could ignore it and then he and Sherlock could part ways (never again, not in a million years). Sure, they could pretend like it never happened and go back to their own happy little adventures like they did before. But none of that could ever,  _ever_  match up to what could happen if he accepted it. Accepted the fact that he, a man, loved Sherlock, another man, and it felt okay—more than okay—it felt fucking  _beautiful_ , like he belonged there in that small, cramped space of Sherlock's heart, and Sherlock belonged in his, although he was getting the better deal, as John's was roomier.

Yet, in some ways, Sherlock unsettled him. His coldness, his ability to separate himself from everything, to sever off reality like a gangrenous limb and live without it, his incredibly thick distance…had he been able to cut John out and then just sew him back on like a reattached arm? Like nothing had happened?

John knew nothing of what their separation had been like for Sherlock, he had only gotten glimpses, flashes of light before the darkness returned. John's fears were open water concerning the detective, and he found himself threatening to drown more often than he was comfortable with.

And where was Sherlock now?

John didn't know. Somewhere, being a mad genius alone in a corner, he supposed.

He needed to stop thinking about this. He was tired, he was crashing off adrenaline and shock and he was possibly feverish judging by the burn of the wounds on his back. The hospital had given him a few antibiotics and painkillers, but he hadn't wanted to tempt fate (or have any addictive substances around Sherlock) and only took the minimum amount.

The nurse came out quietly, shutting the door with a smile on her face.

"How is he?" John asked.

"Better." She said brightly. "Much better."

He knocked on the door before going in.

A bright smile lit Mikheia's face when he saw John walk in.

"Morning!"

If John didn't know precisely why Mikheia was lying in that bed, he'd have thought nothing serious had happened to him. Like he hadn't had his shoulder punched through or nearly bled out last night.

"Hey Mikheia…how are you feeling?" He asked as he pulled up a chair to sit beside him.

"Good, sir. I feel very tip and top of the shape." Mikheia glanced to the door, as if he was expecting someone else to follow John in.

"I don't know where he is." John explained. "Probably in the morgue examining a body or something. Or flogging it." He looked at Mikheia's face and added "It's a long story."

"Would it be one that I would enjoy to hear?"

"Maybe one day." John said, trying to put on a polite smile. "Mikehia, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Why?"

"Well, for starters, for that." John said, motioning to the bandages. "For threatening you at the Kremlin. And for everything else we've put you through."

Mikheia stared at him for a moment and John saw realisation dawn.

"You are…moving on without me. You and Mr. Holmes are continuing your quest."

"Yes…but  _quest_  isn't the word I'd use."

"But you are knights ridding the world of evil. That sounds like a quest to me, sir."

 _Knights._  He could almost hear Sherlock's ego exploding.

"A quest has one goal, though. I don't know if Sherlock wanted just one when he—when he left the first time."

"What is your goal, then?" Mikheia asked and John fell into silence, thinking.

"I want to drag Sherlock back to Baker Street kicking and screaming if I have to, and I want to live the rest of my life in relative peace." John paused. "With him, I suppose." He added with a smile.

"To be together at the end, without interruption." Mikheia reiterated. "It is a quest now." He smiled as he stared at his hospital bracelet. "I think, in that tale I was the bumbling saddle boy."

"Mikheia, you know you're anything but a saddle boy."

"Then I was the horse."

They both laughed.

"You know, when I go back to Novgorod, I will tell my friends of our adventures and they will not believe me. They will think I am telling a pale lie."

"A white lie?"

Mikheia nodded.

"Ah, well…I mean you can't fake a bullet wound, can you?"

"I suppose not." Mikheia smiled. "I guess I should just not wear my shirt all the time, then? And then they might believe me."

John laughed and Mikheia looked to his left shoulder, where the bandages wrapped around a new scar. His smile faded to a quiet grin.

"We match now, sir." He said quietly. "It hurt a lot more than I thought it would."

John smiled.

"People say that too. You know, you don't have to call me that. I'm not Sherlock. I'm not your boss."

"It is an act of deference, sir. I owe you my life now."

"Well, you owe it a couple times over, so I  _might_  just overlook them all."

They both chuckled and fell into a comfortable silence. John liked that. He liked that he wasn't expected or required to talk much in either Sherlock or Mikheia's presence, that there could be silence where nothing wanted or needed to be said.

"Mikheia?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Before you met us, was there anything else you were good at other than stealing and robbing tourists?"

"I was told I am quite exceptional at drawing. Although, with this injury, maybe not so much anymore."

"Is there...anything else?"

"I can rewire a car, but I only had practise on older models, like my uncle's. I used to hotwire it and drive to town...he put a stop to that after I nearly hit him with his own car. Why?"

"Just wondering, generally. I feel like we don't know that much about you." John shrugs with a grin.  "I can stitch, you can draw. Sherlock can play the violin, you can hotwire a car. It's just...good to know other people's skills sometimes. You never know when you'd need them."

"It is curious, though, is it not?" Mikheia said, scratching at the burn mark on his collar.

"What is?"

"Well, in his travels, Mr. Holmes made the choice to go alone, but he also let the both of us join him. Maybe he needed our skills, or things he didn't have."

John was about to scoff and say 'Sherlock didn't  _let_  me join him' but then he thought better on it. Sherlock had indeed _let_ John join him. He had let him live in his flat with him, had let him go on that call on the adventure he had dubbed the Study in Pink, had let him call himself colleague and then friend…Sherlock had  _let_  John do many things.

So what did that leave John with to do on his own? What could he do without the direct permission of others?

He had kissed Sherlock, for one. He hadn't asked or been granted permission for that one. Was that all? Were spontaneous acts of affection all he was limited to? He needed more than that to go on, surely. He had spared and saved Sherlock's life twice in the church, and he had expressly gone  _against_ permission from his superiors. So...that was it, then? Affection and perfidy was all he was allowed to use for his own freedom to do what he wanted?

_Shit._

This was one hell of an emotional crisis. What had he gotten himself into?

He felt like he'd been run off a track, skidding along into the wilds of something he didn't know how to handle yet.

"I'll see you later, yeah?" John said, affectionately patting the boy on his uninjured shoulder.

"Most indubitably, sir."

"Good. Get some rest. Doctor's orders."

Mikheia smiled as John shut the door.

Once he knew John couldn't see him, he shut his eyes and let himself collapse into pain. He barely had the energy to wipe the exhausted tears away, so he let them fall.

* * *

What was wrong with him?

Was it because of the ambiguity of his and Sherlock's possible relationship? Was it because he was tired? Was it because he had learned that the price of his freedom, concerning the agency, involved lies and drugged deceit?

John supposed it was a cocktail of all of those.

He sat outside Mikheia's room, on an empty stretcher tucked away in an alcove, hands clasped in front of him like a penitent man. Passerby must have thought a loved one was in critcial danger. Let them, if it meant no one disturbed him.

"John."

John looked up, into Sherlock's face, calm, pale, and beautiful. He had figured it out. John hadn't wanted him to, but Sherlock was Sherlock, and so of course it was inevitable.

The question. The question he knew Sherlock had wanted to ask since he had shown up at Mycroft's door, bloody and barely coherent, but had never known how to bring it up.

"Where is Mary?"

John shut his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's end of the first series! The second will be posted shortly! Thanks to everyone who reviewed/kudos'd!


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